This is probably going to be long and I didn’t take pictures of the job because I thought it would be so piddly and uneventful but it got stupid for a minute and I learned something, not from this site this time but because of it. If you’re like me and don’t like long posts without pics, no offense taken if you skip or even dislike.
We have right around zero rocks on our little 70 acres. Clearly, a prior owner removed them as that’s quite unnatural here. The land 50 yards past our front door wasn’t ours. It had an old (as in mid-1800’s) farmhouse and barn, as well as a later added garage, and chicken coop plus a couple small tobacco fields. All the buildings were abandoned and falling in on themselves. The owner lived nowhere close and never had anything to do with the place other than lease the remaining fields to a local tobacco farmer. They offered to sell it to my father, and later to me, but always priced it like the buildings were built last week rather than being a collection of unsalvageable liabilities. Behind the old barn was a small pile of rocks. Small enough I can roll them around a little by myself but picking one up, not even close.
My wife has coveted those rocks for years. She’s asked me numerous times to just take them because no way anyone cares. I’ve always refused because they aren’t ours and the owner was a first class ass so no point in asking to buy them. I’ve offered to buy some similar size rocks but no go; she wanted THOSE rocks.
Well, the absentee owner sold their 95 acres, which included the area adjacent to us, to a developer a couple years ago. He needed to get to the sewer line that runs parallel to the creek in the middle of our place. One of his developer buddies owns land nearby and could get him 99% of the way there but engineer as he might, he ended up with a choice of putting in a $750K sewer pump or crossing a 25sf piece of our land where we were growing kudzu. After a year and a half of negotiation, he got the 25sf he needed and we got 3.5 acres of flat road frontage that puts his development on the other side of a line of mature trees so I don’t have to look at his development every morning. We also got the rocks my wife has wanted for at least 20 years. Closed on the trade early this month so this past weekend we went to fetch her some rocks.
These rocks were likely in a clear area when they were piled up by some long dead folk. Now they were about 60’ back in the woods. Only way to get them out was to get the L to them. Path of least destruction required taking out about a half dozen little 6’ witch hazel bushes with a saw. There was a long dead pine on the ground in the way but no problem to just shove it out of the way with the grapple.
So I’m driving into the edge of the woods to take the 60’ journey to the coveted rocks and notice the extremely rotten remains of a large old limb laying tangled about 7’ up in a Volkswagen size blob of briar vine. I’m thinking this thing is too close; I’m going to jostle that vine on the way by and this 6’ rotten thing is going to get tangled up with me or the tractor so best to remove it. But it’s 7’ up in a ball of briar vine so of course the grapple is the way to go here. Apparently not. Got hold of it pinching it between a lid tooth and bottom tooth but it was so rotten that was useless. The vines had a hold on it and it was sort of stuck in the grapple too, but in the wrong direction and it was getting tangled up with the left SSQA latch. Didn’t seem to matter what I did; curl, dump, lower, raise, forward, back; it just kept getting incrementally worse like the vine and limb had some malicious AI working against me to remove the grapple from the tractor. After about 5 minutes of screwing around with it, finally got the grapple on the ground with the right side holding on and the left side disconnected. Getting the limb unjammed only required kicking it once which broke it into four pieces. Had to unhook the right side, realign the tractor with the grapple, hook it back up, and on with the job.
Of course the whole time I was doing that, wife was sitting in the Mule watching me with the same question she’s had thousands of times over the past 35 years, “What the hell are you doing??” She didn’t ask out loud, but I know.
After that, it was pretty uneventful. Shoving the entire pine tree 50’ was no issue at all. Found the rocks were about 75% buried. No problem with the grapple. Without the grapple they’d still be right where they were. We’re now decorating the property with them.
So what did I learn? The briar vine. As I was considering this novella of a post, I thought it odd that I have never known the actual name of this plant, which seems to be a ubiquitous presence in the wilds here. I’ve only heard it colloquially referred to as “that (insert expletive of your choice) thorn vine”. Yet someone at some university must have given it a name that’s usable even in church. Apparently it’s Smilax Rotundifolia or Common Greenbrier or a host of other common names I’ve never heard. Oddly, the NC State Ag Extension website did not list the only name I’ve ever heard as one of the common names.
So now I sort of know why there’s so many things around here named “greenbrier” but whoever names their stuff that clearly never had to try to hack their way through a mess of it.
I said no pictures but if you’ve actually read this far, you deserve at least a couple. The first is looking out from the edge of our front yard. The development was to be where the taller brown stuff that looks like it needs bush hogging starts. That’s one of the little tobacco fields. Our line ended where the greenish grass ends. Our new line is about 75’ past the tree line. The derelict buildings are all on the left, closer to the public road.
The next two are our new barn. 20 years ago it was standing and much of the original timbers from the old post & beam pegged part could have been saved. Not now. The part that hasn’t totally collapsed is much newer and not structurally sound at all.