Now that we have discussed why we want to clear the juniper, let’s chat about how we do it. Basically, there is one method we use to clear juniper – cut it down. Unlike yaupon, it will not come up from the roots. The small saplings we whack down with the machete. For the trees, the chainsaw is the only way. The problem with the juniper is what to do with the tree after it is chopped down. If it is in the woods, sometimes we will just let it lay where it fell and become cover for birds and small mammals and eventually rot. If we don’t want to leave it, we use the chain saw to cut the limbs and drag them to the burn area.
You have to be careful working with it because the leaves or nettles are pokey and itchy, especially when they fall down your shirt or get in your breaches. Wearing gloves is a good idea. Because the trees have sticky sap, don’t sit on a freshly cut stump or you will have a sticky backside! The cedar does smell nice when cut.
Burning juniper is pretty much a mess. There is so much moisture in the leaves when green that they create a lot of white smoke and if piled on too high, will snuff out the fire. It’s best to let it dry out a few weeks before burning. Even then it is a mess. When the sap heats in the fire it pops, sometimes shooting small burning pieces out of the fire ring. The foliage initially goes up in huge flares and the burned needles can float on the smoke carrying a spark. We don’t burn juniper if the area is dry or if there is burn ban in the county as it is too dangerous.
We are experimenting this year with a twist on the “just cut it down” method by ringing the tree and letting it die in place. We used the chain saw to make a cut about an inch deep through the bark all the way around the tree. On some, we then used a paint brush to put Remedy in the cut and some we did not use Remedy. In a few weeks the leaves starting turning brown on all of the ringed trees. We are hoping the advantage of this method will prove to be that the tree dies, the thick leaves fall off and let light in to the grass. Once the leaves are gone, we can chop down the tree with much less mess and less burning. We ringed four or five large trees last spring and are monitoring their “progress”. I will report back on how this process works.
Even though we strive to eliminate most of the juniper, it does have some useful purposes. We use the limbs for replacement fence posts. The fences around Dogwood Ranch are about 60 years old and many of the old cedar fence posts have rotted and are falling down. In some areas, only brush is holding up the barbed wire. We are also in the process of building a bridge over the creek with boards we cut from the large cedar trunks. It has taken about 2 years to cut enough boards and beams but we plan to finally start building the bridge this fall. It needs to be strong enough to span 25 feet and hold a John Deer mower and one adult. I will report on bridge building progress later this fall.
No comments:
Post a Comment