Help Wanted ad

[FredC]

Needed some help this weekend You think this ad would get results.

Work assignment: will be to help load the trailer and climb on the brush and compact it so we can get more per trailer load.

Compensation: Poor rancher can not pay much, compensation will be a hand shake and a hearty "thank you"

Qualifications: Nimble with good balance and high tolerance of pain

Needed tools: a good set of tweezers

Think I will get an takers?

[Whig]

You don't need a worker, Fred, you need a match!

Dangerous weeds!

[FredC]

The match is next. Two trailer loads axed out of a 35 acre field. I think the correct spelling for this stuff is huisatch pronounced we-satch. Makes a fair size tree in a few years and will take over a grassy pasture in 10 years. Deer eat the seeds and plant them in distant fields. Evil stuff. The larger ones can be pulled with a grapple on a medium sized tractor. Most of these were smaller and cut off just below the ground level with an ax. While I was doing I thought of the want ad.

[butlersrangers]

You could have got rid of it, easy, during the recent 'Texas Freeze', by running an ad:

"Free Fuel - U-pick & U-haul It"

[King carp]

I thought that was barbed wire cleared from WW1 trenches. Yikes! Thats some nasty looking stuff.

[Local Boy]

Wow FredC... How many flat tires do you have to repair when hauling your crown of thorns?

[FredC]

They are not solid so I manage to miss most of them on the 4 wheeler. The pasture this came from is irrigated so I need to clean it up and plow it and make it productive again. Last crop there was peanuts a few years ago. Several other species of brush with white thorns are collectively called white brush around here. A couple of other fields have a fair percentage of mesquite, but mesquite wood is too brittle to be pulled effectively with the grapple, so I guess chemical means will have to be employed.

Old timers have told me how this whole region used to be covered in tall native grasses. The said fires would start south of San Antonio and burn to the Gulf before they stopped almost every year. That would have kept this brush in check and allowed the large oak trees to survive.

Getting old enough to think about getting rid of the stubborn cows and leasing the land for a solar farm.

So no takers on employment on the next pasture that needs cleaning?

[waterman]

In the bad old days, the way to get rid of such plants was by "anchor chaining". A surplus ship's anchor chain was fastened on each end to a large tractor, usually a crawler. The operators drove the rigs in parallel, about 1/2 to 3/4 of the chain length apart. Once upon a time, there was USDA cost-sharing for such activities.

Could you use the bucket on a front-end loader to smash that stuff down?

[Knute1]

Is this anything like osage orange (hedge apple) trees? We have a couple on our property in northwestern Illinois. This vegetation was brought up from southwestern US for farmers to use instead of fencing for cattle. The "apples" are not edible, but a wives tale is they deter spiders from coming in the house. The branches are prickly.

[King carp]

My uncles farm in three rivers Michigan had a lot of osage orange trees on it. My aunt made jam from the "brain apples". As i recall i think it was one osage orange, some pectin and about 50 lbs. Of sugar! The jam still had a sour taste to it. The wood from the tree has many uses though.