Time is so . . . fluid.
So true. For instance, 2014 is here and oddly, feels like 2013. Hmm. Except for being in wind today/tonight feel slight dose of earache. Time and ears are fluid? "Turning and turning in the widening gyre. The falcon cannot hear the falconer" because she has a danged earache?
(Yeats might actually find that interesting.)
I can pull stumps up with car jack bro is loaning me.
Now why didn't I think of that? I've got two of those old "handy-man" jacks. The longer the handle the better!
...get neighbor to carry off wood that's not mulch, not burnable, imo...
Or just have a bonfire on site. That would help garden-land too and if controlled, hit some that honeysuckle.
Once that's out of way, I only have 3 poplars, 1 walnut, 2 red bud trees, and 2 pecan to fell...
"Only", she said. Well, only is relative. These don't have bad side or back lean.
Buy an extra chain and blade, just in case need to (and will need to), and smarter to do it all, and split in 3 days with a friend's wood splitter. Maple is different matter but I do know how to work the ground to lower limbs will pulley. I won't let my cousin climb that thing and just drop limbs, as it's too dangerous. Or he can work ground and I'll climb it, dang. But, not just dropping them: even when notching out and back cutting too much can go wrong. Get the sucker down to 30' and just fell it after that.
Chains and pulleys and cables and come-along, oh my. I cut a silver maple a couple of years ago that was leaning over one of my buildings (and stealing nutrients from one corner of the garden). Took awhile, but I laid it right where I wanted, 180º from the lean. One of the scariest things I've every done was limbing out an old hickory many years ago. No thank you, climbing trees with a chainsaw is not for me. It is scary. Methodically and carefully wins races. Just too blasted big to fell, I think. But with other trees out of way, maybe not. But geez, 180°--was that side-lean 180° or back-lean 180°? That is to say, the blasted maple has left side lean, but want to check top ONE MORE TIME to see if . . . boy to fell that sucker 180 from front lean and 180 from side lean be a mean feat with two trucks, but whole lot safer than climbing. "What could possibly go wrong?"
Sorry for thinking aloud, there. The space I'll have then will be, after stump-grinding that maple, which will bore and burn first, be a level 50' x 175' garden space to go with 50' x 150' existing.
That's getting up to commercial scale, for hot peppers, anyway. I hope that class is a two-semester plus summer session course; you're going to need the labor. Sadly, no; a required "American Lit" class and from looks of their GPAs none would fail, drats: lol!
Getting rid of the honey suckle is worst part but have a plan for that,
Only time in my life I broke down and used Round-Up. I don't think honey suckle cares about R-Up. Clearing out good wood today, some of it was green as grass and growing in this cold. Scorched earth policies and giving it nothing to climb to, helps. Was thinking flame thrower! Thermite? I saw this at Northern Tool and have 20 lb. propane tank and uh, student carriers of tank, ha!
which after getting maple down and out--thank God not an oak but softer wood--will be EASY.
Silver maple? For some reason I was thinking hard maple, though all but one of my own are silver. It is hard maple but not as hard as oak: taking my blessings where I can get them.
Also gonna move some azaleas (which are super easy to dig up since they're so shallow) on bank and either sell them or maybe keep one and relocate and hope it lives. Tricolor. Amazing and "created" locally by this fella who's passed on. AND have some french drain and not ironically, I have 130' of it. Saved it for something, didn't know what to do with it and now I do! Goes at base of bank to keep garden area not as wet as it would get. Another friend has bobcat with small bucket and I see no need to dig trench for the drain by hand! Not 130 feet of it! Nooo.
I've got some trenching to do, too, both for drainage and to keep some bamboo at bay. No bobcat, though. I do have pick and mattock, axe, shovel, etc, and a need for exercise (if not the desire). I have no need for more exercise than I already get. And it's okay if I have an earache, I was assured; as we left burn-party tonight, friend from h.s./college says, "Nothing on my docket until next week, so we can run" (10 mile run S. Mountain State Park and MY idea?) "whenever you feel better." Her husband's fishing off SW FL until next week, too. Damnit. Said buddy from h.s./college is a lawyer but the good kind, prosecutes primarily child sexual abusers/pedophiles. For all of our sakes, she's not used to losing. We used to run barefoot on gravel to see which one gave in first. Gathering stuff to make the ATV-truck, aka Subaru wagon, we were singing, "And a country girl can survive!" With all this work, I'll take any easier softer way there is vis a vis bobcat and how does one keep bamboo at bay? But on the other hand, ya have handy homemade supports for garden! When moved back here, first house lived, HUGE forest of it down WAY down below house, garden area. Free bamboo! But glad it was far away, too.
Nice thing is, all those trees that hung there for so long, seriously rich soil. I mean, John, when I've needed humus for fungally based compost teas, I went down there, barely dug into moss. Earth worms jumped up at me.
I lol'ed. Yeah, just like sailfish; glad ya liked that! But they were startled!
Might "take a village" but for the grunt work, I can lol, have "field trip days" to discuss Thoreau with students. I've already written that syllabus. Approved joyously by department chair: "Struggling with the American Pastoral in Transcendentalist Theory and the Contraries." Imagine.
(Yep; title and semester layout came right off top of head: Thoreau, Dickinson, Emerson, and Poe with preludes by James Fenimore Cooper and Phillip Freneau.) Heck, college kids need to "go into the woods to live deliberately" (this rationalization for free labor is workin' for ya, right?) after reading the texts, and doing some nature-labor, they'll learn more in context than they would if we stayed in a room for the entire first half of the semester. Which is not a rationalization. I don't think.
:
Sounds like a class I'd audit. And I like this idea for slave free labor work credit.
I've met three different people in the last two or three weeks who work with kids and have expressed interest in field trips out here. It's not child labor if they aren't getting paid, is it? No, sir! It is assuredly not if ya don't pay them, but they need to be old enough to be helpful. 
Have a great New Year John. Gotta go meet my buddy to watch this old building burn. Local FD is burning a building for practice, so a bunch of us are using this opportunity to gather and watch, take blankets just hang out, play music; somebody needs to bring a fiddle and play part of Nero! Looking forward to your 2014, hon!
Happy New Year to you, too, Annie. 2014 is going to be awesome for all of us! You bet! 
But ya know, sounds like a bit of work too! 
rocked! (I tuned-down finishing sauce for the more timid.)
in my book. It's an old book, but it's still smokin' 
Have great 2014!
