Cleaning Up the Fencerow

In South Louisiana hard jobs are best left to a brief sliver of time when the temperature is bearable.  This weekend was one of those weekends.  My To Do List has been cluttered by an item that I kept putting off and it was high time to scratch it off the list.  I'm talking about cleaning up the fencerow that borders the south perimeter of our property. 

Just over the property line is a wooded area that we don't own.  It is a jungle of sorts - filled with Live Oak trees, China Berry trees, Chinese tallow trees, Willow trees, and finally, privet.  Privet is in the ligustrum family and bears small white flowers in the spring.  The other thing they do is take over the land.  If you turn your head for five minutes, its encroached upon your land. 

Every couple of years I have to sharpen my ax and machete, put on gloves, and clean the privet out.  I have an electric wire that runs along the perimeter fence powered by a solar charger.  I tie into that wire to run cross-wires to partition the pasture into 7 paddocks to control the cows' grazing.  The doggone privet will grow into the fence, touching the wires and grounding out the electrical current.

Here is a look of the overgrown fencerow after I began chopping and had gotten about a third of it cleaned up:  You can see how overgrown the fencerow has become.

As I chop the privet, I toss the branches over for the cows and goats to eat.  They really like to eat it.  The photo below shows the third of the fencerow that was cleaned.

I try to clear out an area roughly five yards wide to provide a buffer zone to my back fence.  I do realize I am on my neighbor's property, but they are absentee owners and if I didn't do this job every couple of years, my fence would be in ruin.  I've learned that if you merely chop the privet at ground level, many shoots of new growth sprout from the trunk as if angered by the chopping and proliferate toward our property with a vengeance.  My technique involves chopping below the ground surface to clip the roots, and then pull the plant up.

I'm not going to sit idly by as the privet moves forward.  Chop!  Chop! Chop!  As I go I pick up fallen trees and throw them back into the forest.  I can see animal trails in the fencerow where countless nocturnal animals travel.  I'm sure one of those travelers was the possum I killed in the hen house the other night.  You can see below that I am three-quarters of the way done.

At last I made the final chop, opening up the overgrown fencerow.

I backed up and took a photo from the beginning of the fence to the end.  You can compare the first photo of this post to the last and see what a difference it makes.  Oh, that is the hen house in the foreground.

It looks nice, but as with anything, it takes maintenance.  In another couple of years, I'll be out doing this same job once more.  Privet doesn't sleep.  As I type this, privet is out there re-grouping, plotting, strategizing to launch an offensive and lay siege to our fence.  We will stay watchful and vigilant against the onslaught of the privet.

Blazing a Trail With my Machete

So he went with them; and when they came to the Jordan, they cut down trees.  II Kings 6:4

I watched from afar day after day as the darkness encroached.  Slowly, gradually, almost imperceptibly, the forest crept closer and closer until one day, the forest was threatening to overtake the fence.  The fence is right on the southernmost property line.  To the right is our property, and to the left is property that is owned by folks we've never seen.  Quite often we'll let our cows quickly graze down the jungle that is contiguous to our property in order to destroy some of the tall grass that harbors mosquitoes.

I should have taken some before and after shots, but I was focused on the task at hand - cutting down trees.  Well, they aren't really trees.  Most of the jungle consists of privet. It was time for the privet to go.

With a sharpened blade humming through the air, I chopped privet, Chinese tallow, China berry, pecan, oak, ragweed, and briar with reckless abandon. My machete and I blazed a trail in that jungle 8 feet wide and cleared anything we could reach growing down.

I tossed some of the browse to Annie, the Nubian goat.  Annie is just finished with a 7 day cycle of injections of penicillin as she had a foot infection (foot rot) and a touch of mastitis after we quickly dried her up when Tricia was in the hospital. Annie was thrilled with the browse and ate to her heart's content.  She is feeling so much better now - much better than a week ago.

I tossed some browse to Annie's 3 kids - Buckwheat, Jane, and Darla.  They were not interested at first, but soon got up, stretched, and began eating all the leaves off of the plants.  If you look at the bottom of the photo, you'll see a vine growing.

That vine is honeysuckle and while honeysuckle looks great and smells even better, it is not a good thing to have growing on your fence.  Honeysuckle will wrap around the electric fence wire that runs along the perimeter fence.  You can see it if you look closely. If honeysuckle wraps around the wire, it can ground out the current and then the cows will enter paddocks that they aren't supposed to be in yet.

As I cut down the jungle, I threw some to the goats, but for the majority of the cuttings, I used the "chop and drop" practice.  All cuttings get thrown into a pile where they will decompose and become part of the forest soil.

The encroaching jungle is habitat for all sorts of critters that like to eat chickens.  I like to have a nice clearing between the fence and the woods so that I can better see the enemy. While hacking away, I could see their trails alongside the fence.  I have caught many a possum along this fence.  

Working with a machete is therapeutic and a great stress reliever!  It doesn't take long in the humid weather to completely wet your shirt with sweat.  I hacked down quite  few spider webs, twirling the huge banana spiders with my machete and tossing them to our chickens who were waiting patiently for  a spider snack. At last I was done.  I turned around to walk back, nursing a few blisters on my right hand and regretting that I didn't wear gloves during this undertaking.

This is immediate gratification.  Seeing the product of your labor and knowing that the work you put in paid dividends.  But the forest never stops trespassing and I know we'll do this exercise again next year.  In fact, as I slowly walked back toward the barn, I think I could see the privet growing...