June 2021 Update: Learning about Bush Hogging

Current Mood: Excited to get to working on the land! Hopefully by the time we move in, we'll already have cleaned up enough land for our daughter to play, and to start a garden.

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We felt so blessed when we found our land. It's really hard to find rural, private, wild land that still has old trees on it, but also in an area that has high-speed internet service which my husband needs for his job. But we found it, and it was an answer to prayer! Huge live oaks, some maybe 100 years old, grace the overgrown lot. It's on my to-do list to date some of the trees (and by date, I mean identify their ages, not take them out to dinner, though that sounds kind of amazing, too.) All we have to do is clear the brush, keep the majestic old trees, and it will be our version of paradise. It will be a place our daughter can run and play and not worry about traffic.

Above: A photo of the land from the road.

"All we have to" is an understatement, of course! Cleaning up 20 acres is a PRETTY big job. Notice how thick the overgrowth appears in the photo above. It brings a whole new understanding to the word, "thicket." That word always remind me of the movie Bambi. But I digress.

We actually bought the land without ever stepping foot on it, because it was so wild-looking from the road. After closing, I put on long pants... and boots... and bug spray... And we finally got in! Interestingly, once past the curtain-like vines that serve as nature's privacy screen, it clears up quite a bit.

There are several natural clearings; we hope to use one for a homesite.

Obviously, we want to keep all the old trees. Those are priceless to me. Truly there is a feeling of quiet and calm in the woods. I don't want to totally clear the land, although that is a very popular thing to do in this area; many people turn acreage into grazing pastures for horses or cattle. However, we do want to clear out the underbrush and plant some nice soft grass to create more play space for our daughter, space for raised garden beds, and of course, a few small cleanings for the future goats and donkey I want to collect! Bonus, the animals may help provide natural lawn-mowing!

We discovered some pretty cool plants growing on the land, including wild kumquats.

In the meantime, it's so wild we can't even let our daughter visit the land. All the brush and general lack of maintenance has allowed everything from wild plants to who-knows-what bugs and snakes to have free range of the place. We read about land-clearing techniques, and came across advertisements for bush hoggers. Bush hogging, for my city friends, is using a special mower to clear out underbrush and scrub.

Notice the skinny tree in the center - that's an example of what we want to clear, while keeping the older oaks and locust trees. All those weedy bushes and vines can go, too. Ewww, bug city!

I mainly just like saying, "bush hogging." It sounds so casually knowledgeable, like something a real farmer would say. I try to drop it into every day conversations regularly... Just kidding, just kidding. But in reality, we won't have much opportunity to actually bush hog anything; because our land is too heavily forested, it turns out that a typical bush hogger cannot handle most of it. Hmmn. What to do...

Don't worry, we would never cut down this beauty! My husband is just playing around for the photo; he's loving his new machete.

By the way, here is the machete my husband bought. Yep, he bought it on Amazon. We may still be a LITTLE city-ish. Haha.

It turns out that bush hogging would normally be relatively cheap. But in our case, due to all the extra equipment and work it would take, having a professional clean up the land would cost a pretty penny. Like, up to a few thousand dollars per acre. And we have 20 of 'em. So.... You guessed it! To save money, we decided to do some of the work ourselves.

Until the driveway and homesite are staked out, we don't have a clear picture of where we should start working, but once the builder marks those main areas, we plan to put in some elbow grease. Also, even though it's noticeably cooler underneath the shady tree canopy, the summer heat is pretty brutal in Central Florida. I have a feeling we won't be starting this project until the fall.*

*Please let the record reflect the above statement. It seems that every summer I promise myself I won't do outdoor projects in surface-of-the-sun-like conditions, but WHY OH WHY does landscaping always pull me in at the hottest time of the year? So please, someone remind me to wait to work on the land for a few months. Like, until February, when it finally cools down around here!

It's time for me to sign off for now, but I will be sure to keep you update on our progress. Until then, follow this blog for a brand new recipe post tomorrow!

With Love,

Molly

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