Lily, The Lovely Bright Molly: Making A Farm

Well, I have to say that I haven't gotten in much riding time lately. Fred and I have been very busy trying to turn our little place into a farm. The property had several cleared areas on it that could have been used for grazing the animals but they were not large areas and they were interspersed between wooded areas and none of the areas could be seen from the house due to a solid line of trees behind the house. The entire property slopes downhill south to north. The house is on the west side of the property on Cedar Bluff Lane. The property going east slopes downhill 150' or so to a little creek.

Shows slope of land behind house. This is before clearing

From the creek, the land then slopes uphill 75' or so to a more or less level area that was fairly open. There is a path the runs the entire property east to west where the water line comes across the property.

Path (where waterline runs) to the top of the hill

Top of he hill looking southwest

Top of the hill looking north

From the creek to the top of the hill was wooded.

Wooded area from creek to top of hill

I decided to clear the wooded area from the creek to the top of the hill that was north of the waterline path. That would give me a really nice pasture area and I would have full view of the pasture from the house and deck.

From the top of the hill, the property slope down to another creek. There is a small patch of open grass area on the west side of the creek at the bottom of the hill about 40' wide and 100' long (guessing) and then across the creek is a strip of open ground about 60' wide and it runs the entire length of the property along Black Ridge Rd.

Strip of clear land west of the creek

East side of property along Black Ridge Rd.

We decided we wanted to hire someone to come in and clear the land for us. We did the work ourselves on our property in Maine over the 30 years I was there and I just do not want to do all that work again or take that much time to get the work done.On the recommendation of a neighbor, I hired Bickett Construction out of Ridgeway to do the job. They specialize in farm tiling but do other jobs in the field tiling slow season. Their sale rep said promised that when they were done, all I would have to do is seed the property for my field. And he said they would put in a culvert at the creek behind the house so we would have easy access to the new field. I made sure with the sales rep we were clear on these things as having this work done was not cheap.

Well, this will make short work of some land clearing!

Path they made from Black Ridge Rd. to top of hill for equipment They could not get up Cedar Bluff Lane to the house with their flatbed.

Ready to start some clearing

And the work begins

Property cleared on east side of the creek behind the house

Piling the brush for burning

Anyone bring the marshmallows?


Burying the remains of the burn pile

Bicketts also leveled the ground beside the house where the barn is going to be built. This was a bit tricky as though the ground didn't look all that sloped, there was over a 3' drop from one side to the other of where the barn was going. So the choice was to either bring in a ton of fill, or split the difference and move dirt from one side of the area to the other and just make sure it was done so that water would drain away from the barn and not into it. We chose that route. Bickett's had the equipment and experience to do this correctly.

You can't part a man and his dog! (dog riding in dozer)

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Bickett did a very good job overall. But, there were a few glitches between what was promised by the sales rep and the business owner who did the work. The owner was not prepared to either get the ground to the point that it was ready to put seed on nor was he willing to put in a culvert at the creek. After telling him what the sales rep had promised and being told he could NOT do that for the price that was quoted there was a bit of back and forth calling between me, the sales rep and the owner. In the end some effort was made by the owner to do what was promised. First he pushed a bunch of roots and dirt into the creek bed, which is dry right now feeling that would provide a way for us to cross. But though the creek is dry now, a LOT of water flows through it in heavy rains and it flows though with a lot of force. That was not going to work at all and we asked him to pull it all back out of the creek, which he did other than 2 huge rocks that still need to be moved. He did put in a culvert but without consulting me on what size culvert was needed or where I wanted to put it. The one that was put in is a 12" and that is going to be too small when we have heavy rains. Where he put it is fine though not necessarily where I would have chosen to put it. And he did run a disc over the field to smooth it out a bit more. That helped but it was still a long way from being what I expected as "ready to put in seed". While I was not happy about this as I did not get what was promised me by the sales rep, I do feel that overall, Bickett's did a good job. They showed up when they said they would and got the job done quickly and efficiently. The sales rep was honest and never tried to deny what he promised me. I would actually recommend them to others and just caution to maybe get things in writing before having the work done which I did not do.

But, this left Fred and I with trying to decide how to get the pasture to what we felt was ready to seed. I decided that a York/Landscape rake would likely do a good job finishing the field. I tried to find one to rent but had no luck with that at all. So, I decided to buy one. The question came to buying a small one to go on our lawn tractor or a large one for a big tractor and borrowing our neighbors tractor to do the job. We decided to go with the large one and I'm sure glad we did! So, farmer Fred got the job or raking the new field and the rake did a great job! It smoothed the ground perfectly and pulled up a ton of the roots. We piled the roots and burned them. There were still some roots left behind even after going over the ground with the rake. I got the job of going around and pulling them up or cutting them as necessary. This took me about 3 days of long hard work and created another nice big pile to burn. And the field is now ready to be seeded in. Another neighbor has offered to help us get the pasture seeded in. He does this kind of work professionally so has all the right equipment to go on a tractor. The seeder, disc and rollers that will get the job done properly and quickly. And since he is my next door neighbor down hill from me, he has motivation to see that we get this ground growing grass soon because if this soil gets washed out, it will end up going his way!! But truly, I have some great neighbors here and my appreciation of the help we've gotten is beyond words.