What Little Progress

 It's been colder than normal in these here parts, so my plan to clear a little bit of the forest garden every day was delayed.  When it was actually above freezing, I managed a small bit of clearing behind the leaf mold cage.  

It looks ok now, but what you can't see on the ground are the bittersweet and Virginia Creeper vines snaking about the forest floor.  With the leaves, acorns, and other detritus frozen to the ground, the finer cleanup will have to wait for spring.  This doesn't look like much, but it was three hours of snipping, lopping, untangling, and in the end four manure sled loads of brush went over the hill and into the pit of Out of Sight, Out of Mind.  That's where most of my brush ends up that isn't usable in other projects.

Shout out to these gadgets - I wouldn't be without them.  I use them to pick up leaves, thick piles of grass left by the mower, waste hay in the mule paddock, and piles of small brush.  

 With so much of the brush I'm currently cutting being brambles, these make picking up the thorny cuttings much less painful.  I've used other styles that were more square shaped, but these are my favorite.  

One more session on a mild day opened up even more space.  This time I transported most of the brush to the landfill.  I mean, do I really want those bittersweet vines re-rooting in my woods?  Not really.  After cleaning it up, I was so proud of how barren it looked.

Ah, there's nothing like a fresh six inch snowfall to prove you've missed a ton of small brush.

 I'll get all the fine stuff with the wheeled trimmer when I get it back.  In the meantime, I need to get my steps in by snowblowing my driveway.

 We're back into the deep freeze for the next week, so it looks like my brush clearing endeavor has been sidelined for now.  With this new snowpack, maybe I can actually get a little ski track laid out to keep the momentum going.  Maybe.  We'll see how things play out by next weekend.