I’ve done a lot of trail cutting in the past year. I’ll be taking some video of our entire trail complex to post here as soon as I buy a camera stabilizer, but for now, I’ll have to settle for showing you a couple of pictures and some shaky video. The problem is, they’re not even great pictures or video at that. Oh well. I do what I can.
Basically, we’ve got this entrance area to our recently purchase land. The entrance area has some fairly thick pine tree coverage which doesn’t exactly allow for a wide ATV to fit through. I did cut the trees back about five years ago, but at that time, the trail was used for walking only. I made it about four feet wide. Now that I’d like to ride back in this area, I’ll need a trail that’s about eight feet wide. Most of the trails that are back in the woods already are wide enough. It was just these initial trails up front that I was concerned with.
Last weekend, I went out to this area with a pair of shears, some clippers and a small bow saw to widen the trails. Most of what I had to cut was only about four feet tall. I’ve actually never seen to many baby pine trees in my life and I have no idea how they got here, but they needed to be cut back. The first and last time I took the ATV for a quick cruise back there, I was forced to run so many of them over. I didn’t want to do that again.
Anyway, as I went outside this morning to snap a few photos of my work, I was greeted by a beautiful day. This is a picture of Laura’s front garden and our trusted garage that I use as a wood shed. As you can see, we’ve got lots of flowers and firewood. Remember, winter is coming.
I mowed the lawn yesterday, so it was a pleasure to walk on it this morning. Here’s a photo of a few of our apple trees in the backyard. I was on my way to the trails when I took this.
Here’s an apple that didn’t make it.
And this is a nice shot from under an apple tree. This is probably our largest apple tree.
Okay, let’s move onto the trails. This section is very short, but it’s just so exciting because of how thick the trees are. They are like walls. This is the entrance to the trail.
This is the first bend on the trail.
And this is the straight part that leads to the rest of the woods.
In the months ahead, I’ll need to take out the chainsaw to widen the next section and then I’ll need to add some gravel to a swampy area so I can ride through it without riding through mud. I’ll write about that when I get to it.
Walking back to the house, I decided to take a few photos of the baby pine trees I planted some years back. I guess they’ve rooted well because we’re getting at least a foot of new growth per year out of them. I’ll need to do a lot of transplanting this fall because I want to move some of them around. Here are some Norway Spruce.
And here’s a row of the pines. I’ve got Blue Spruce, Norway Spruce and Balsam Fir in this mix.
And that’s about it. I’ll write more later as things happen.
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