What kind of a title is that for a post?? Is he referring to a bull hog and using the wrong name (should be a boar) or is he referring to something else? Something else, indeed!

After being sued in Floyd County in February by an excavation contractor who lives in Check, I was understandably gun shy when it came to engaging contractors to do work for me. After talking to my friends, though, I decided to proceed with my project and hired John Sutherland, who owns a Bull Hog, which is made by Fecon. Some friends opined that this is not a machine to be used in the woods, but given the nature of my site and the work that I wanted done, it seemed to be my only option. John promised to be onsite on the morning of June 24th and he was, minus his machine, unfortunately. He had hit a rock (not an uncommon occurrence, as I was to find out) and the impact had broken a tooth on the machine and caused the drum to vibrate so badly since it was out of balance that the machine was not operable. He had to send the drum to Ohio to be repaired and re-balanced and told me that he expected it to be back and re-installed on the machine by noon on the 25th. True to his word, it was, and he commenced work about noon on the 25th.

Here is a shot that I took of the business end of the Bull Hog:

The drum spins at about 2,000 rpm and, as you can see by looking at the ground beneath the machine, reduces most of what it encounters to mulch.

I asked John and his son, J.R., to pose for a picture before starting their work:

John is standing on the machine to the left and his son is standing to the right.

I wanted the boundary lines cleared so that the logger I have hired can more easily access the woods as he uses snatch blocks and winches to haul logs out of the the property. I have hired a man who is going to sensitively log the property – I had wanted to have Jason Rutledge to do the work, but he was unable to do it for me and connected me to a friend of his who shares Jason’s philosophy of being a “biological woodsman.”

John set to work and within a very short time, had cleared both boundary lines:

When he reached the property corner, John turned and headed for my neighbor’s pasture:

Note the thick tangle of Oriental Bittersweet and Multiflora Rose, behind and to the right of the machine. I asked John to clear this patch out on his return trip back up the path that he had cleared. This is what that patch looked like after John finished:

With all the sunlight, I’m sure that my friends are right that there will be an “explosion” of new growth, but I’m reasonably certain that I will be able to manage it with the use of a bush hog. I had been in Floyd during the winter and early Spring, so I was familiar with what the thickets of multiflora rose looked like, but I was entirely unprepared for the dense thickets of Oriental Bittersweet. Fortunately, Oriental Bittersweet has no thorns on it, so it can be cut at or near ground level with loppers during the winter and set back pretty severely.

I also had John and his son cut some trails through some other areas of my property so that the logger would have easier access to areas that he needs to work in, but since this post is getting a tad long, I’ll make that the subject of the next post.

If you think you would like to have this kind of work done on your property, I will say that I was very pleased with the work that John and his son did for me. They are honest, perform what they say they will do when they say they will do it, and charge a reasonable price for their work. They were also very careful to follow my instructions on what I wanted done and did not try to clear more than I asked to be cleared so that they could make more money. I can’t think of a higher compliment for a contractor.