Poineer's version 2.0

We are still here in Minnesota clearing our land. Well I have been clearing and Lisa has been on vacation in sunny Florida. I have been out to the land just about every other day and I have developed a new respect for pioneer's. I can't imagine crossing this country and to get to these Minnesota woods and decide that this is were I want to farm. To have to build a house and to clear the land with no modern equipment at all. It is amazing. I mean we are doing it with modern equipment and it is still hard work.

If you remember we bought an atv and a pull behind brush mower.

"Lil Burro" clearing brush.

It worked great clearing large areas of land until nature killed the atv by sending a mouse infiltrator into the atv and disabling it. It has been down for 3 weeks now. So in that time I have been doing many other things out there. I have been using our new chainsaw to down many trees that need to be removed. We have an over abundance of firewood now which will be handy in the future. With downing trees you get all of the unwanted branches that you cut off. So we have been making many, many brush piles all up and down our road. I am talking about big piles, 5-6 feet tall and 30-40 feet long by 6 ft. wide.

Our original plan was to get a fire pit and burn the brush when we were out there. Well we quickly got behind on that. So we had a wonderful idea of renting a wood chipper. Why not, we are near "Fargo".

This was a heavy duty wood chipper and we are thankful for that. It went through the brush as fast as we could feed it and we were very thankful for our daughter Kendra's help. There was more brush than we had imagined and we would not have gotten through it with out her.

Our biggest piles of brush are where we were clearing out to make a road to an eventual campsite.

Everything behind this brush pile is stuff we cleared out of that area behind it.

Kendra was a great help. I of course did the best I could with my arthritis acting up. And Lisa was a wood chipping animal.

We finally got through that pile and we were nearing the end. We started at a quarter to 11 and ended up close to 5. But we got it done. Now we can see where more trees need to be removed and more brush cut back. The stuff we cut with the mower is already growing again so we need to get our atv working and it is in the shop. We can't wait anymore so I would like to introduce "Bluetus".

We bit the bullet and bought a brand new one. It is bigger and more powerful than "Lil Burro". 

Also on a side note, Lisa got into the poison ivy. She got it before her vacation to Florida and it kind of got worse while she was there. So much so that she went into the clinic when she got home for meds to help take care of it.

So back to the pioneers. I don't know if I could have been one in the late 1800's.  I was probably more suited to be a dapper gambler and Lisa a saloon girl or school marm. Who knows?

We are getting ready for a big adventure so stay tuned.