Bush Hoggin'! Improving my Forests for Fire Protection, Ecology and Lifestyle!
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- Опубліковано 20 бер 2024
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“How to Find YOUR Dream Homestead Property”
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About Curtis Stone:
Curtis is one of the world’s most highly sought-after small farming educators. His book, The Urban Farmer, offers a new way to think about farming𑁋 one where quality of life and profitability coexist. Today, Curtis spends most of his time building his 40-acre off-grid homestead in British Columbia. He leverages his relationships with other experts to bring diverse content into the homes of gardeners and aspiring small farmers from around the world. Learn more at FromTheField.TV.
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![Swales: Earthworks for Conservation and Storage [PDC Preview]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/W-f2genlUZI/mqdefault.jpg)
I wish I had one of those machines, in my world I'm the bush hog!
Lol Right?!
My wife and I live in Seattle a few hours drive south of you and were fortunate to purchase 20 undeveloped acres on a mountainside 100 miles east near Plain, WA. Hired a forester, who helped us understand the forest in our area is quite unhealthy with too many trees and brush. Not enough sunlight or water in Eastern Washington for all those trees to share, making them unhealthy (subject to beetle infestations) stunted and as you mentioned create a huge fire danger. A century ago reoccurring natural fires and some initiated by Indian tribes caring for the land created a sustainable balance of approx one tree every 40 feet. The forester said this lower tree density is best for local wildlife and great for tree health.
Our goal is to thin the property as our neighbor has to a healthier 40 ft tree density. Of course our WA State government encourages tree thinning while simultaneously making the process as difficult as possible, thereby harvesting the maximum fees and departmental head count from citizens. In my modest opinion you are very much on the right path to clear underbrush and I hope thin out trees as well. After much research we are going to add a solar PV array on the property as we did up on the roof of our Seattle home 8 years ago.
FYI - I am a previously self identified political progressive, who is now thoroughly horrified by the dysfunctional direction of my fellow progressives here in Seattle, who's magic thinking has remade my beautiful hometown of 66 years, into a crime ridden and dangerous urban disaster area. To push back, in semi-retirement, my new mission these past few years has been to design an affordable kit-home that could be replicated for a cost of $110/sf so that other hardworking folks living in rural areas with access to more affordable land might be able to afford homes without incurring a claustrophobic mountain of debt.
At first I tried designing using a prefab modular approach, but I wasn't smart enough to use this "stick-built-on-two-sites" methodology to meet my cost target.... just too many sticks, tasks and construction time required. A new novel approach using structural steel portal frames with panelized floors and exterior walls has reduced my kit-home parts count by 80% with a construction time of 2 weeks in the warehouse and 4 weeks on site (excluding a very simple dual stem wall concrete foundation timeline). The first prototype, after hiring a local structural engineering firm to evaluate the construction drawings for code and safety compliance, will be a two-story 2,000-sf cabin on our 20 acre property. If that is mostly successful, a real estate developer friend who is dedicated to first-time home buyers would like me to bid on a project to build three homes on an urban lot. No other contractors or ADU (DADU) manufacturers penciled out to enable purchase by first time home buyers. She says I am her last and best hope for the project.
With these initial homes and perhaps a dozen others I could begin to evaluate how to scale for manufacturing and find some talented younger person to run the business, since I am only a designer who knows his own limitations. For other inventive residential designers, I highly recommend SkyCiv's FEA structural stress analysis online tools. Before SkyCiv I was dusting off old calculus books to plow my way thru by hand stress analysis calculations (poorly). Having a Finite Element Analysis engine tell me exactly what was happening to my home design under various loads has been invaluable. Highly recommended and I have no financial connection to SkyCiv other than happily paying the small license fee every month.
Stay safe working with your heavy machinery out there.
Keep up the excellent work. Thanks for sharing
Honestly.. That whole section.. You could build maybe 4 or 5 step down ponds, similar to how they do in the rice fields .. and have steps of ponds that you can see as you drive by on your driveway. You can build a little dam for each one and as it spreads left to right across the valley there-- the ponds would get fairly wide and look really cool. With that excavator you can dream up whatever you want and it's fairly easy to do... The good thing about doing it this way is that it doesn't create such a large shear wall from digging a deep hole on a hillside like that. Your ponds are slightly more shallow and you just step down to a lower one.. I just think it would look really cool from the driveway as you drive by. lol.. and you get several little bonus reservoirs. But you could also grow food there and have fun little experimental gardens .. (if it gets any sunlight). Fruit trees maybe?? If you wanted to get really fancy, you could have a little spillway/ overflow on each dam, where it flows from one pond to the other like a decretive fountain.. Just on a larger scale. Even if it was just a culvert pipe that would still look really cool seeing the ponds feed each other down the hill.. maybe even try to grow rice in the summer? IDK.. I just think it would be a crazy addition to your compound.. Experimental aquatic gardens
Putting in serious work! Looks beautiful. Wait to it greens up 💚
Win, win, win, looks like a great spot for a pond.
Definitely improving your fire resilience. Nice work!
Interesting projects , so rewarding to yourself and family , keep the videos coming.
Ive been bush hogging for a month now, with the low snow level I was able to get at it early. Major fire risk abatement, making way for fencing, fire buffer, aesthetics, new camp sites and all of the material we pull out can be chipped or turned into biochar. Kinda hard on my backhoe, its gonna need some TLC after this....Get some pigs in that hole after the dig Curtis, they will seal it up and fine tune the banks, they are amazing landscapers!
I think the lower pond will work although I am somewhat concerned about the storage pond preventing the downstream seepage that is currently occurring through above ground water trickling down the slope. Trick will be not to create a mosquito brooder. The nice thing about it though is that it will add to the humidity levels in that section which will help knock a fire from the crown to the ground -won't be perfect, but certainly won't hurt.
ALL the dirt you dig out of there.. I would use it to build a dam on the low side, towards your road and then it would really compliment the hole you're digging. I wouldn't build it right on the road.. but maybe 20 ft up stream from it.. It would be a nice little pond to look at as you drive by too. (basically what you're already saying. :) .. and you can put another over flow control right there that will bleed off and go into your culvert like it's already doing. I think it's great.
I’m doing the same thing this spring down in Tennessee. I love walking barefoot through my forest. Cheers Curtis!
Beautiful forest & creative, useful ideas. Blessings to all 🤗🇨🇦
Just set out a bunch of mushroom plugs in alder logs in the forest. Leverage the shady areas
New subscriber ❤I hope to have a homestead this year so video very beneficial to me thanks for sharing I'm from the states Michigan
I really love Canada, my husband relatives there. We haven't been over probably since 2019 such a beautiful country
Something that may be of aid with this task....a mulching head. You can get one for the excavator or the skid steer, though usually you see them on tracked machines. If you can find one for lease, you can probably get that cleaned up in a week, leaving all the mulch discharge on the forest floor.
We’re doing a similar thing on our property. We can’t wait to start a mushroom area in area that stays quite damp even on the summer. Would love to see what you have to say about that.
This bush work is for yourself which makes it nicer. Dam your out in a T shirt and I am on the east coast still wearing layers!
Milwaukee brush cutter would do that so much faster. Then thin it out a fair amount way to many tiny trees you want them close together for wind protection.
Unbrainwash yourself about fires and learn to use them as a forest management tool, way easier than Bush hogging by hand. All you have to maintain is the perimeter fire breaks and you can turn huge pieces of land into a park with annual or semiannual fires. Check out the work the deer hunters have been posting on youtube. This is how I'm setting up my place, have done several burns with great success.
Win win win, smoke that grass and make a video of dreams, love you follow those dreams and do it. Silvopastor is the way forward.
Send in the sheep and goats, then the cows, then hogs, fallowed by chickens. Forest floor and brush cleared and exposed.
All that brush I chip into my boiler and used for heating
T-shirt in March?! Crazy weather this year!
Have you done any research into controlled burns? I have been in forest you describe. There is so much organic material that can be dangerous if it caught fire.
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Run the Wood through a chipper and add it to the soil food web.
Have you ever done bush work before? That's a lot of extra effort, cost and noise for very little return.
Yeah I have done some landscape work before. It does cost to rent the chipper but the woodchips are so beneficial for the soil food web. They breakdown rapidly into healthy soil. They also keep the erosion from happening and help to keep water in the soil during the summer months. THey are also very good around the base of trees cause they help the mycelium grow. Definately more work, time and money but well worth it in my opinion. Thanks for the great videos.@@offgridcurtisstone
Curious about mosquitoes up there??? Here in Tennessee I'd be worried about a shallow pond being mosquito pond. Are mosquitoes an issue up there?
We get them for about 1-2 months a year. None til mid April usually.
Then toy can do a bottom brush burn.
you know they are going to try and burn you out
So, should I just give up and wait for that?