With more of the land cleared we decided to explore the woods a bit. Higher up on the property — near the building site — the woods are easily accessed but, at entrance level, there are one or two impediments.
This pasture, and our entire ag program, is named in honor of St. Sophia. It’s one of our largest open spaces. It begins at the tree line (pictured) in the south and extends all the way to the witness tree on our northern property boundary. It includes the entrance area and guest house. (Roughly numbers 2 & 3 in this image).
To get to the tree line, we had to go through tall grass (medium distance) and dense stands of wild blackberries1 (which we want to keep!) extending all the way to the woods. So we planned a wide path rather than a more radical clearing of this area.
So we fired up the trusty brush mower and sallied forth. But, as fate would have it, at the tree line we discovered this:
If you look closely you can see barbed wire cross-fencing. It’s incredibly valuable to have cross-fencing on your land and this was, obviously, installed to keep livestock from entering the woods. Unfortunately, this afternoon, it also kept a few humans from entering the woods. Eventually, we’ll have to cut the wire and install a gate but a lot of thought has to be given to the best place to do that. In the meantime, these lower woods will remain the exclusive domain of the wild ones.
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1 Wild blackberries are a thing in Missouri. A native fondly recalls collecting wild blackberries as a young girl. In describing the process, she casually mentioned that snakes love to hang out in blackberry bushes. For some reason (!) that was very much on my mind as I mowed down those thick, dense blackberry canes this afternoon…
