Fence Lines and Brush

If you ever have watched the show called Life Without People, it will show how nature WOULD take over.
But WE are on this planet~! We will let some of nature take over to a certain extent, but when it becomes a danger to mankind then man will take over and stop nature. There is nothing wrong with that.
I keep my lawn nice, and cut it as I don't want not only weeds to take a holt, but I sure don't want creepy crawlers just outside the door nor mice coming in like they own the place either. Keeps all sorts of things down, including ticks.

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Considering my work is my farm, and where the house and native pasture are is surrounded on three sides by miles of cash crop land, and the other side by a country road and more miles crop land, that is an unlikely thing to happen. Also there is NO brush, just native grasses and some wild flowers. I work very hard in the summer to cut out and kill anything invasive, like thistle and cut out any trees that start along the fence line or in the pasture.

We just purchased our 23 acres and three sides of it are woodland. The fence line goes between our woods and a neighbors field, but there was no way to walk along our side of the fence. I spent an entire weekend with a pruning saw and brush axe clearing 4-5 feet of access to the fence line. I made some video/pictures of it to publish on our blog, but since then we've been mired in moving and haven't had the chance to find, much less get my computer out to do that.

I spend a portion of each weekend we go out there to keep the fence line cleared, without chemicals.

WhirldWorks Farm

Aside from the noxious weeds if I want to let my property get over grown with "brush' or native species weeds that's exactly what I will do. That's not saying that it's okay to let noxious weeds gain a foothold and become a problem for me AND my neighbors.

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"Do you believe in the devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption, and destruction of man?" Hobbs
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I'm stuck with a mess of rose vines on my fence line from previous owners not giving a darn.
Also, NO weed killers work on this stuff. I've tried every single brand at recommended and very high concentrations and nothing.

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I'm stuck with a mess of rose vines on my fence line from previous owners not giving a darn.
Also, NO weed killers work on this stuff. I've tried every single brand at recommended and very high concentrations and nothing.

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I have an aerial picture from '53 showing about half of the land I now farm as well as several neighbours. Roughly half of the land that was farmed then isn't now. Some of that is a good thing, steep hillsides and soggy swamps that were worked with horses but weren't safe or possible to farm with tractors that were seeded back to productive forest (most of which I own), but lots of other good farmland that hasn't grown much besides weeds and scrub trees for 30-40 years. The owners' right to do it but it doesn't make it any less sad to see. It's pretty common to be able to gain 10-15% of your land back just by brushing the fence lines, even more if you take them out. I've seen farms we bought with wild grape vines thick enough to stall a 25 ton excavator

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The internet - fueling paranoia and misinformation since 1873.

The recommended dosage of 2-4-D will get them but it does take repeat spraying. I use 300-400 gallon a year primarily on multifloura rose and make a little headway each year.Between them and autumn olive I'm looking at total control in about another ten years,provided nothing happens where I have to skip a year.


Wade

Yes that is good stuff, I use it myself around fence lines, etc.

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Our yard is surrounded by timber. The original owners kept the timber pretty nice and grazed cows there. The guy that bought the timber when we bought the house/yard first cut the 12-15 hugest trees down and let them lay. He didn't keep the trails mowed or cleared, over hunted it and didn't keep the raspberries under control. Needless to say, he sold it to us a couple of years ago because there were no more deer in his timber. We opened the trails back up, mowed down all the open areas and we do not hunt. The deer are back along with a lot of other wildlife. We can enjoy walking or riding around the timber. We left some of the fallen brush for the wildlife. Some of the trails, we seeded with waterway mix. I would love to plant some native flowers and grasses in some of the more open spaces. We can get them cheaply from our county department of conservation. I just haven't gotten to that yet. The yard, we kept mowed weekly or more often. I don't want critters up close to the house. We also keep the branches trimmed around the trails and around the edge of the yard. It is a lot of work to keep the timber up.

Different strokes for different folks. There is no need for some to keep their fence lines clean if they don't need fences. Blackberries are a wecome site im much of the US where the Himilayins don't grow wild. Yep, you may have to deal with some problems from the seed coming over from your neighbor. The thistles we have here are the national flower in South Africa and much appreciated. Texans like Johnson grass, but here it is a problem. I love the smell of Japaneses honeysuckle, even though one has to fight it in fence rows here. I imagine that there is someplace where multiflor-rose is a real treat although it is a scourge here. One has to live with their neighbor whether his lawn looks like a golf course or a weed bed.

If you really want things to be controlled move into a community with a housing association... they will stop all of that tansy growing (and your hay growing as well).

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Moving to that big black hole in the night satellite photo. (also the hole in cell phone coverage )

I don't want things to be completely controlled and look like a golf course. Why do you think it is okay for you to let invasive tansy grow on your property that will spread to other peoples pastures and has the potential to kill their livestock. Yes tansy ragwort here in Oregon WILL KILL LIVESTOCK. That's why it's so important for me to keep it out of my hay fields because it can harm the animals that eat my hay. Because of people with your witless mentality harmful weeds like tansy will never be eradicated and will continue to plague farmers and harm livestock.

People who don't have a rural background and/or didn't take the time to learn anything before they went country mistakenly believe that everything "natural" is automatically good. When in fact the natural environment had eons to balance itself out, the prairies and all those other balanced ecosystems didn't happen in a few years. So if you are trying to duplicate the process and want to have "natural" land, I hope you are a vampire and will live a few hundred years.

If you are against chemicals, get a propane tank and a flame thrower to clean up the fenceline, when conditions make it safe to do so.

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It is no more important for you to keep it out of your hayfields than it is for us to keep posioness weeds out of ours. Many of us go to a lot of effort to do such things just as you. But if my neighbor doesn't try to eradicate his, I have to deal with it.

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Moving to that big black hole in the night satellite photo. (also the hole in cell phone coverage )

In Oregon you can be fined by the county for allowing invasive weeds to grow on your property. I know people that have gotten letters in the mail threatening this. So we don't have to just "deal with it." We should NOT have to deal with it.

He didn't mention it was ok to have tansy