Ellen Upton

Thanks to all who responded! Your advice is accepted & I will keep it in mind as we progress. We bought this land in 2008 as a place to retire and we have many dreams & plans (not only for us but our children & their families). Since my husband will be 75 & I will be 61 this fall (when we decide to move to this property), we are fortunate that we will have help from our children. We are excited about permaculture & determined to practice those principles!

Thanks Zach. I think we may have to at least get someone to brush hog those areas that we use when we go up there to work on our future home and some paths throughout the acreage. But probably will just have to leave alone some of what has just been recently cut to prevent erosion. We are hoping to move there this coming fall so probably it won't overgrow much until then. The growth we had to just cut had been accumulating since 2008 when we first took over the property and lately there were so many thorns from the honey locusts that we couldn't even walk anywhere except in the area where we have our barn on the plateau!

Thanks John. Will look into that!

We have 20 acres in E. OK which we bought in 2008. Since we don't live on the property yet and we have to travel 5 hours to get there, we are not able to keep up on the growth. As a result the land was resorting back to forest. Our plans are to use this property for many permaculture projects in the future once we can move up there permanently. So we want to be very careful how we treat it.

Recently we had a neighbor clear some of the land of many honey locusts, blackberry brambles and some smaller trees. This was part of the land that we needed cleared so that we could walk around, evaluate, and start on projects needed to move up there. So now that the land has been cleared in those areas, our neighbors suggested using some kind of growth deterrent (to them that means something like Roundup, etc). We are very concerned to not do this by poisoning the earth there. But don't know how to deal with the fast growth of the plant life, especially honey locusts. I know these trees are nitrogen fixers but there were just too many of them! Any recommendations? We have had some grazers such as horses, alpacas and cattle but that didn't seem to handle those honey locusts, etc. Would appreciate help in this!