The path

My goodness, brambles are hard work to get rid of. I know that goes without saying (or writing) but whew! We cut a crescent path through the woods from one corner of the east side of the building site/meadow to the south end and it took us almost three hours. I had hoped to hack all the way to the creek on the east side of the meadow because I wanted to see how steep the slope there is and the previous owners told us there were apple trees over there, but about 15 feet in, we discovered a deer path going south and decided to just widen that back up to the meadow, since after 3 hours, we were ready to be done with that area, I know how steep the hill is, and I spied some ancient looking apple trees that are either done producing for the season or completely retired.
We had already spent two hours before that picking berries, hacking at the sides of the driveway, and removing snags and some brambles from the creek path. The creek path is one that is clearly used by deer and perhaps even neighbors. I removed several dangerous looking snags, lots of dead logs and branches and over-hanging brambles, and I have to say, as hard as the work was, it was all very satisfying, the scratches and sore muscles being well worth it.

Here is a "before" picture:



Oh, and of course, this before picture: ;)



And here is after 3 hours of heavy labor:



I will try and not focus on the fact that we took out less than 1% of what needs to be removed, and the ones we chopped down still have their big knotty roots in the ground, which will re-sprout and still need to be dug up or chopped up somehow (rototiller?) if we want to plant anything else there. Boo to people being irresponsible stewards of the land! This is what happens when land is logged and then ignored. The excavator will be removing some of it, but that tears up the land so badly, including anything native that has survived the logging and invasive species onslaught, that we are hoping to save some of it. I have uncovered many native plants and if we we just tear up the land, it will all be lost. We will be doing it in some areas anyhow, and replant, plus we do want a small lawn and garden areas. The excavation (backhoe) also churned up all the topsoil and it is a clay mess and can destabilize the land. The one good thing about it is that it brought a lot of the rocks to the surface, which we are going to try and use for landscaping.