Working on the Land AGAIN

While Ray was busy working on the house the kids and I were clearing the land. We had a huge pile of brush from all the branches off the trees that we cut down. I thought that pile was going to be taken away by a dump truck. Silly me! LOL!! It was to be burnt.

The Mess Where the Basket Ball Hoop Will Go

The Messy View Out My Front Door!

Then there were piles of logs all over the yard. There were two large piles in the back yard, two on the right side of the front yard and then one large one on the left side.

Plus, of course, all the brush that was around, under and on those logs!

The Mess (Logs and Brush) When You Drive In

The View From the Front Door to the Right

The first day we started a fire and started pulling brush out of the pile and burned it. Pretty soon we realized that it was burning it as fast as we could pull it out of the brush pile. We would stack the fire nice and high and then douse it with a bucket of pine needles and soddy grassy stuff. This method managed to get us through the dense stuff. But still we needed to burn faster, so I decided to light another fire. Now things were happening faster!

Burning Brush

Then I managed to steal Ray for a few minutes and he chainsawed up about four logs and that cleared an area, causing me to be able to totally clear what was left behind.

Chainsaw Ray

Clearing the Stumps

I raked and the boys shovelled and wheelbarrowed away about a hundred loads of old pine needles, dirt, composting forest floor and such. We now have a huge compost pile behind the garage that is going to have to rot itself into the ground!

Hauling Another Load

After a day of this we moved onto another pile of brush and completed this one. Even the little guys were helpful in hauling brush.

Little Helper

Many times we had to cut off branches before we could remove any of the logs.

Fun, Fun!

Another time I borrowed my biggest son from his job building the house. I needed his strength to carry off some logs that we had unearthed from the huge piles.

Hauling the Logs

After a hard morning it was lunch time - the kids favourite time of day!!

Lunchtime!

Cuddles With Big Brother

I then managed to borrow a guy that was working for Ray. He spent about five hours chainsawing up one of the piles of logs. We had not planned to work on the front yard until next spring, so it was great to see how big my front yard became!! And that was just working on one side.

Logs Cut Up - Area Looking Better!

View From Over Front Door

After this we were able to take some rope we had lying around and hang it up and then hang two little swings from it for the little boys. It was wonderful. You should have heard the baby squeal and giggle with delight! It kept him occupied for hours!!

Swinging!

There are so many wonderful trees on this property that we can hang swings, tire swings, rope swings and ladders from! I have also commandeered all the good thick logs so that I can build myself a real western fort for the little cowboys in our house! Fort Lafreniere.

The Messy Jobsite

Go On! You Can Do It!

Our Littlest Helper - and Help He Does!

As well as cleaning up the brush and the logs, we have had to clean up all the jobsite garbage that we were accumulating. Here you can see the mess and the little guys helping to load Daddy's truck to take it to the dump.

Our yard is looking wonderful and next spring we shall continue the work. Many hands make light work!