Cleaning the place up . . .

After securing control over the land, a gamble to say the least, we decided to invest some time and money in beginning to clear the berries and mowing the place.

This is a westerly view from the gate.

We rented a tractor from the Kabota dealer in Forest Grove. Shelled out about four hundred for a little tractor with a loader on the front and a really large brush cutter hanging off of the back. Ann loved driving it, but there wasn't much time for it. We got about half of it cleared in the eight hours we had paid for. All of the east and west meadows got mowed and a ton of stuff was pulled out of the trees. We also got a chainsaw and cleared a ton of little trees and any of the lower branches that got in the way. 

The white lines are the corners

The idea wasn't to get it all cleared, just to get some idea of the thing itself because there was no place from within the fence that you could see the dimensions. The fences were all covered in berries, the ground covered in berries, the trees . . . Covered in berries.

I lost about a pint of blood driving through all of the berries, but we made substantial headway even though you wouldn't have been able to see to the back of the place. I cleared the entire front fence line and under the walnut tree. Cut down a dozen big branches off of the walnut tree. 

The shipping container as seen from the gate.

Eventually the thing began to look tamed.

We broke the first tractor. Eventually we had another tractor day, and got a guy out to start taking the mobile homes and motor home apart. We got the place cleared all of the way to the edges.

We broke the second tractor too. But you could now see the fence all of the way around, and the corners from most of it. The trash became obvious and we knocked down some structures that needed it. I cut down a few dozen scrub trees as well.