Clearing Land for a Fence – Part 1

Last October, I was able to snag 2.2 acres of land. There’s a mobile home on it, electricity, a well, and a septic system. However, it needs a lot of work before I’ll be able to park my tiny house on it. The first thing I’d like to do is build a fence around my property. This is because it’s super hard to tell what’s my property versus my neighbor’s property, especially when you get back into the wooded section. Also, one neighbor has lots of dogs that like to bark and bite.

I corralled some friends into helping me start to clear the land around the future fence line. Because of the freeze back in December, my well is out of commission. Instead of a burn pile, we just piled the limbs and sticks as we went.

It had been a while since I had visited the property. There’s been a lot of rain recently. On the positive side, everything looks so lush and green. On the negative side, the grass and weeds were quite tall. It was hard to maneuver because you couldn’t see where you were walking. Holes, ant beds, snakes… the horrifying possibilities were endless. Luckily, after dragging large tree limbs across the way, they made a natural path that got easier over time.

Doug brought his chainsaw and led the path. Following behind him, I, Phil, Don, and Sumedha dragged limbs into piles. Because we weren’t able to burn anything, the pile got large pretty quickly, so we ended up creating a second pile. In the mobile home, Debby added some sort of odor eliminator that she used with her old goats. (Spoiler alert: it works pretty well!) She also picked up a lot of trash that was around the property.

This was an absolutely exhausting task! And we only got halfway done with one side of the property. I say “only;” it was a huge accomplishment. And now I have a more realistic idea of how much work can be done in a day. The next priority is to fix the well so we can burn while we clear.

Watch the full excitement of the day below: