The Hay Field
One thing that Brooklyn just really wants out on this property is a line of sight from the house to the hay field. Something about sitting on a porch swing watching the sun set over wide open prairie is just so relaxing. So Jaken found a way to give her just that and here are the details of how it went down from Jaken’s perspective.
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Once we got out to the property, the ground looked good and dry, not too moist anymore, so we decided to go ahead and do some more tractor work. The pecans had blooms, proving they weren’t dead, so we moved a pile intended for burning out from under them so as not to scorch them. I brush-hogged with Forky around the pile to keep the future fire from spreading while Grandpa used the Kubota to shift the pile over to the side more.
I got the chainsaw out and began to cut the trees that were too big to brushhog over down. I left the stumps a bit high because the brush as so thick I couldn’t get any lower to the ground. Once I had the trees cut and could see a little better, I brushhogged a bit around those stumps. After running the brushhog for a bit I saw some old rusty barbed wire and figured we needed to get off and pull all that old wire out before we hurt ourselves on it.
I rode to Kristen and Steven’s on the fourwheeler, nobody was home, so I poked through his tool boxes until I found a rusty pair of dykes. I took it back to the truck and WD-40’d the shit out of it until the hinge worked. We moved the old gate to the other side of the opening, clipped off the barbed wire from the fence post, and moved the fence post. After that I took the freshly-cut strand ends from the barbed wire and hooked them to the Kubota’s bucket and let grandpa just pull that barbed wire straight out then rolled up all of the wire and placed it on the old gate so we didn’t pop any tires.
After that I decided it was time to cut more trees for the pasture opening, but the chain was loose on the saw. When I went to tighten the blade, I realized the adjustment bolt was broken where the flathead sits in, so using that wasn’t an option. After taking the chainsaw blade off and putting it back on, the chain was tight enough to continue, so I chopped down two more trees, bucked them up, and loaded them into the bucket of the Kubota for Grandpa to take to the burn pile. I got back on Forky and tried to start him up but I wasn’t getting any crank, so we pulled the hood off and checked out what was up. Apparently, all the earlier brushhogging had rattled the battery cables loose, so we fixed those, replaced the hood, and got back on. After Forky fired back up, I cleared around those two stumps which need to be cut down shorter. I heard a loud clang, and something on my left foot felt tight. After shutting off the tractor, I realized a branch had somehow lodged itself in the shaft that works the clutch, so I had to get the little 10” electric chainsaw and cut the branch out to free my clutch. With the clutch free, I kept clearing until we had a pretty good little opening from the barn to pasture. During this time, Grandpa was attempting to spread the old burn pile out and fill in some of the tire ruts we had made previously.
I noticed Forky was getting a little tough to turn, so I shut him down and took a look. The bracket for the power steering had broken plum off, so we decided to call it a day.
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At this point Brooklyn had gotten off work and drove up to the property to check out the progress. The sun was just setting and throwing some gorgeous rays over the field and you could just barely see the barn peeking through the remaining trees. We walked through the newly cleared path and couldn’t help but smile at all the progress that has been made so far. Sure some bumps and bruises have been gained over the past few weeks but after starting with basically a forest and a badly flattened barn to now an open grove around the soon to be refurbished barn and freshly blooming pecan trees is incredibly encouraging. We can’t wait to see the finished product. We capped off the evening with some fun video and pictures in the field as the sun set on us.
