Yet More Brush Clearing

After I finished with with my original clearing, I wandered a bit north and found a large area with 10 year old Douglas Fir surrounded by brush. The brush clearing will never end, but at least it keeps me trim. I've given up on trying to estimate the size of these brushy areas, but based on how long it took me to walk from on end to the other, it's well over half an acre. It also has a pretty good slope. I started from the bottom and am cutting everything down. Once there is plenty of room to work, I'll focus on clearing around each Douglas Fir and then widening those rings.

Surfing craigslist the other week, I noticed a nearby outfit that has a forestry mulcher akin to this:





There is a $150 "setup" fee and then it costs $125 to $175 per machine hour. They claim they can do an acre in three to five hours. Their grinder can handle brush up to 6" thick which covers most of what I'm dealing with. I'm seriously considering having them come out next month for two days. They can do in 15 minutes what it takes me a day to do with a chainsaw and brush cutter. Winter is over and it's time to get my big ass into Lycra and perch it on a bicycle seat.

I'm keeping an eye on the Douglas Fir buds and am waiting for them to pop open. I thought they usually opened in February or March, but I guess I remembered wrong. I noticed some are open but the majority are not. The Grand Fir seedlings are looking good. I think they were planted 4 years ago making them 6 years old. I know with the Douglas Fir seedlings, they start growing rapidly when about 7 years old. I have a row of 18" Giant Sequoia along the southern property which were doing fine last year but now are looking very brown. I'm not sure if that is normal. They were crushed by the snow and I have staked them up.