Beginning to clear

The top shot is the gentleman who is limbing and bucking our fallen trees ( I learned bucking meant cutting up the logs into firewood sized sections). In exchange for his labor, he keeps the wood. He has an outdoor wood burning furnace, so the amount of wood he's collecting will heat his home for the entire season. That's an all around feel good. We get our site cleared and provide a free winter of warmth for a farm family that can use a break. Altogether, I believe we cut down more than 30 trees. The telephone pole in the foreground has since been pulled out of the ground by Ameren at no charge, if you can believe that. Of course, they just left it lying there, proving you get what you pay for. It's up to Ellen and I to deal with the limbs left from the fallen trees. The last two shots show some of them. We're spending part of our labor day holiday dragging all the branches into big piles that are out of the way of the excavators. Yes, that's right. If everything goes to plan, we'll break ground the week of the 8th! I'll rent a chipper/shredder on the 13th and convert the huge piles of limbs into huge piles of mulch. We're working on our first deadline though. The area to be excavated has to be cleaned of debris by the 7th. Ellen's getting really excited!!