Christopher Owensby

Thank you very much for your reply! You've given me at least a few points to ponder.

I hadn't thought about having donkeys before. With the way my property sits, with about 700 ft of road frontage on a well travelled state highway, I will have to resort to fencing this area in before I  even begin to think about larger lumbering animals. Although, I have seen lots of free donkeys advertised around here so that could offset the cost of the fence.

I have fished with catalpa worms before, but had never thought about selling them. I do know the trees are very hard to kill, much like the Mimosa.  I guess any seed pod bearing tree will proliferate at its own will. The "scrub" pecans are from squirrel planted  nuts from both papershell and Stuarts i have elsewhere on the property. They are not lumber trees yet, but will be eventually.

My chickens have done a really good job clearing up weeds and grasses in areas around our house, and it might be possible to get them in the back area to clear some of the lower stuff.

Bryant RedHawk wrote:

You don't have to limit yourself to goats, donkey's and hogs are also great animals for clearing land of excess vegetation. (our donkey eats most of the day, while she likes to graze on grasses, she also loves to prune trees and the end shoots of brambles, blackberries, wild grape vines are all eaten with great relish, like they were beluga caviar on brioche.  

These are just the things that popped into my head as I read your post.

Redhawk

I have recently been able to convince my wife that our purely ornamental yard would look much better if the plants served more purpose.  That being said, I am currently developing a plan to tackle this area and I've acquired 20-25 yds of arborist's mulch and quite a bit of composted horse manure from a nearby stable. What I need some advice with, is the back 3/4 acre of our 1.5 acre homestead.  This back half has pretty much been left to its own devises for the better part of the past 10 years.  About 1/3 of this area is shaded by a really nice old oak, a few scrub pecan and pear trees, and lots of Catalpa trees.  Another 1/3 is overrun with blackberry brambles and honeysuckle, and the other 1/3 is mostly briars, wild'ish roses, and a variety of common weeds, grasses, and/or overgrowth.  The big question I have in mind, barring goats ( the area is not fenced, although fence to a goat is more suggestion), is there really a good way other than sweat equity in just chopping my way into this area to take it back from the wild?  In anyone's experience, are their other methods that are better than others? I've even considered having the local FD do a control burn for training.

Deb Stephens wrote:I do have a lot of empty feed sacks though (hundreds collected over the last 10 years or so since feed stopped coming in paper sacks) and can't use them all as bags, so I'm considering sewing them together to make tarps or house wrap, etc. They're far too useful to throw away.

Deb, I have a corner in the basement devoted to just storing feed bags.  By the time I get all MY empties folded and stacked, I have friends and neighbors bringing their feed sacks as well.  It is truly amazing what people will bring to you when they know you recycle.  There are so many feed sacks now that I have been considering the tarp option myself.  They definitely make good table covers for applying finish to furniture as well.

These are the bags that I make in the style of which you are speaking.  I would muxh rather buy feed in cloth or paper, but the plastic bags make really durable grocery/garden totes.  I typically recycle old thrift store cloth into liners with pockets and such.  They sell really well at craft shows and combined with egg sales my chickens produce income.