Brush Hog Love and Healing

My mother thinks it is hilarious that I love the brush hog.  Before I lived here as the primary resident responsible for maintenance of the property, I despised the Kubota that my parents own jointly with my aunt and uncle that live across the street.  It seemed the the thing needed constant attention, and the men of the houses insisted on using it for every little thing that I could have easily done manually or with the lawn tractor, requiring far less input.

I like to garden with a spade, not a tiller, and I like to shovel the drive with a snow shovel, not a blade on the tractor.  Couldn't they just turn the compost with a potato fork rather than the bucket on the tractor?  Couldn't they just dig a few holes with manual post hole diggers rather than using (and breaking) the auger on the tractor?  Then they wouldn't have to sharpen and oil and grease and maintain for hours and hours.

Well!  Things seem a bit different to me now.  I fell in love with the mower attachment last summer, when Mike and I were mowing about 7 acres here at Peace Acres, and another 2 at the home we have for sale north of Springfield.  The trusty Cub Cadet shrank considerably in my mind.  The blade became my beloved after a 10 inch snowfall this winter that would have left my Civic stranded for over a week.

But the brush hog!  That baby goes far beyond those other two implements.  My heart soars as I sit in the seat of the tractor and watch multiflora roses shredded to mulch in a single pass.  The brush hog tears asunder cedars and wild cherries that have sprung up all around the lovely white oaks, hiding their stately trunks and providing shelter for poison ivy against the mere mower.


My goal is not simply to rip apart the less savory plant life and create a more park-like or pastoral setting, though I do like that, but to reveal the wreckage of large branches that lie around each tree, creating an unruly island of plant life that cannot be tended by the implements. Then Mike and I can get in there with the chain saw and clean up the mess, and we will be able to brush hog, mow, or hay quite readily once or twice a year.

The wreckage is the result of the ice storm of January 2007, which my heart and mind equate with the beginning of truly horrific times for my family.  I think that if I can finally clean up the mess on the property that has remained a burden and an eyesore since that storm, perhaps I can feel that at least some of the wreckage within my family and my heart has also been tended to and cleared away.