Yard Clean Up

     When we first bought our house I thought our yard was perfect. By this, I mean that I did not have to do much to it to make it the way I wanted. The only trees we had in our yard were next to the property lines and 2 big ones close to the house. Plus blackberry bushes lining the property line and an occasional one popping up throughout the yard. Little did I realize that this was going to be a major problem in the years to come.

blocked by the blackberry bushes

     I had attempted a garden a few times before settling it on the left side of the yard. We had planted some fruit trees. The 2 big trees came down last year, and over the past few years I have been tackling the brush and blackberry bushes.
     Since having chickens we have realized that they love the dirt along the property line and kept finding ways through the fence. I did manage to clear most of the brush and put up chicken wire along the fence line but came to an abrupt halt when we found out that part of the fence is buried 2 feet down in a pile a dirt with blackberry bushes growing in the pile. We figured its about 75ft of fence that is buried.

The property fence is holding the blackberry bushes at bay.

  

     The blackberries are nice but not where they currently are, since I had planned on extending my garden all the way to the back of our property and the blackberries growing next to the fence line on this same side of the property have to go. I do realize that this might not be the ideal place for a garden and it was more likely suited in a different part of the yard, however over the years with other things that were planted or constructed it is just not possible. Plus where the garden is currently, it gets the most sun throughout the day.

    As you can see from the 2nd photo, I had started to clear the blackberry bushes starting at the back of the yard just to see how far down the fence was buried. Did not take me long to realize how much of it was underground. I do wish I had years before gotten to this task of removing these bushes or at the very least trimmed them back to maintain them properly. The tree in this picture is also growing through the fence so it is possible that it will be coming down as well, time will only tell. I will be posting updates as more progress is made.