Long time no blog

Well, rather than try to catch up, here is what I have been doing between trips taking Magnus to the E.R.

In honor of Pioneer day, I decided to clear some land. The first day cut a path through the middle of the thickest part of the area I intended to clear. I have used this method before, and it has the benefit of making a path that leads back to the burn pile, it gives good access to the center of the problem rather than just chipping away at the edges, and also divides the work into two clear halves. Unfortunately I didn't have a camera for a before picture, but here are a couple of after pictures. This took about two hours, but of all the days, it was by far the hardest, if only because it was so hot, and I was so unused to clearing land by hand.



Here are some pairs of pictures that show the before and after, more or less from the same vantage point and angle.




Another pair:




Here is what the raspberry patch looks like if you mow it:



So far I have about 8 hours into it. Tonight Zoe, Emily, Zach and Kate all came out and helped for most of the 2 hour block. They were a big help. Zoe is a little freaked out by how big the burn pile is though. We'll probably burn that towards the end of September. It should be a doozy of a conflagration.