Clearing The Land: Making Way for Our Future2 min read

Sitting on our back porch enjoying the land surrounding our home has been such a blessing. Over the last few weeks we’ve been busy in and around the house, getting the renovation work finished and the children back on their studies. Most of our work inside the house is at a point where we can start doing little-by-little improvements as we make this our home. We’ll have blog posts coming up with before and after pics for you!

As the weeks have gone by our biggest hurdle was the sheer volume of underbrush, baby pine trees, and the occasional down tree. Mrs. B and I spent many sweaty days trying to clear as much as we could with a pair of loppers and a newly purchased chainsaw. One thing about moving out to this homestead is the amount of tools I’ve acquired over the last few weeks. Tools I know will be vital to our success in doing a lot of this work ourselves. With tools in hand, we managed to clear out a considerable amount of brush and small trees around the house. We even purchased a wood chipper from a local Facebook group so we could mulch down as much of what we cut down for our gardens.

But, ultimately we had our work cut out for us. A few trees and a stack of brush barely put a dent in the volume of thick brush we had to tackle in almost 9-10 acres of property surrounding our home. Awhile back, the in-laws found a disc mulching service that you could rent for roughly $3,000 for a week. A hefty investment, but one that would transform our landscape dramatically.

We had already put quite a bit of money into our house to get it in a better, livable state, plus some, and that 3k was looking harder

and harder to achieve. Through lots of prayer, some open communication, and the power of trade/bartering, I was able to secure a week’s worth of forestry mulching service from incredible guy I met via, of all places, Craig’s List. We struck up an exchange through various emails. His interest peaked at the services I could provide him as a web developer. He came down for the day and scoped out what he’d need to do and with confidence, he knew he could make our vision come true. A few handshakes later and there was a Bobcat T770 sitting on our driveway ready to absolutely obliterate all the brush, baby pines, and just about anything else that stood in its way! We still have a lot of trees to contend with, but we are getting there, one step at a time!

Now as we sit on our back porch, looking in awe of the sheer power this tiny machine had, we are thankful for the blessing to have met Joe Branch with Bobcat Services of Texas.

 

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