fundamentals-manual lot clearing

FRIDAY FUNDAMENTALS-MANUAL LOT CLEARING


Moving out to and taking up residence on a lot of junk land isn’t what most of you had in mind as you took up your semi automatic arms and donned your NBC gear as the Soviet missiles posed threateningly just over the horizon. You dreamed of concrete bunkers and cases of military rations ( not because they tasted good but because you can’t cook once removed from the BBQ grill, and post-apocalypse there are few non-radioactive animals to grill outside the family dog ). And forty acres with babbling brook and fields of amber waves of grain. And if you had started in on that dream homestead as the Reagan era Alaskan and North Sea oil had rescued the economy you would be surrounded by food security and nice lush views now. Unfortunately most of us allowed ourselves to be distracted by raising voracious curtain climbers and buying the Princess Bride more than one pair of shoes, living in urban land fills and being seduced by glittering cards of plastic. We missed the sea worthy scow and now we only have passage left on the Titanic. Now, as the middle east and north Africa go up in black smoke and Japan turns to radioactive slag and the captains of derivatives fight over the last government bailout, having long ago had the rest of the central banks abandon the dollar, time is once again short ( it really was all coming apart in the 70’s, and while it is tempting to think we have another rabbit to pull out of the hat this time around, it would be the height of foolishness to bet your life on it ) and you have far fewer options. To have a hovel roof over your head, free and clear of debt so as to not become homeless, your few affordable options include buying junk land. And once you get there, you need to clear the land. Manually. Because hiring a backhoe operator would almost cost as much as the lot itself.

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Some of you might get lucky and buy land around the Mississippi or east of that and actually have trees on your lot. Odds are you won’t be able to buy an acre of oak and other hardwoods on your $800 budget, so we’ll assume that your trees are rather scrawny girth wise and easily cut. The rest of you will be moving out west to a scrub brush oasis. By their nature those tend to be dry, what with seeing only ten inches of rain a year and all, so they too are easily cut. I personally hate chain saws. While they make short work of your vegetation issue, to me they are a messily amputated leg waiting to happen. I prefer the quiet, relatively safe, manual cutting tools. When I moved out to my Nevada lot I had to cut scrub brush quickly. Rather than get a chain saw I just put in two marathon bouts of manual saw labor ( one about three or so hours and the next morning about another four hours ) with a small camp saw. I cut enough in an L pattern ( to get that all important full southern exposure ) to drive the trailer in and set it up. These had to be flush with the ground since I was worried my brand new tires would pop on a jagged stump sticking up. After I set up the trailer I could cut a few inches up off the ground, and I cut about ten to twenty feet away from the trailer my first few weeks in residence.

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As I learned a year plus later, there are better tools for cutting sage brush. While shopping at the Family Dollar ( they have the cheapest cat food around, plus quite a few other things ) the wife spied a pair of hedge clippers on clearance. For only $3 it seemed like a cheap enough bet to see if they would cut brush. Actually, what you want are Bypass Loppers, not hedge trimmers. The loppers have the long handle, short blades, whereas the clippers have short handles and long blades. I had always incorrectly labeled them. Those puppies worked wonders. With the long handle giving you leverage they cut pretty easy. Even using a crap quality pair from China, with hollow tube handles and mediocre metal, they where so much easier to use than a saw. So much easier. Believe me, I’ve cleared a lot of sage brush with a saw. Go with the loppers if possible. If the sage brush is taller than a foot or two you can use a Mattock Pick and chop them off at the base ( beware cutting off a foot- if you are going to kill yourself do it with a chainsaw and get it done much quicker ). You can use the pick anyway, even on the smaller stuff, but it does take more energy. For those really big sage brush, the kind you are amazed haven’t burned down long ago and at four or six feet tall the ignorant label trees, you can sometimes twist out. If they are dead you can turn them opposite to their natural curl and they will come out with no more effort than getting dizzy.

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The Web is full of sites selling reasonably priced one and two man saws with affordable replacement blades, for those jobs where nothing else will do ( and a great tool to have post-chainsaw gas anyway ). For the small stuff I recommend the loppers. Any fool can use a chainsaw, but the manual tools will last past the Oil Age. And by not wasting money on a tractor you leave the ground undisturbed. I have no erosion or dust problems on my lot, despite ferocious winds year round and a downward slant on the land. I think leaving the sage brush roots in place helps out immensely. Even a small lot seems like a daunting task to clear by hand, but slow and steady work and not much more than $30 in equipment get it done just fine.

END-two guest articles posted earlier today.

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