[AT] Red tractor day

[Dean Vinson]

> The Rose hedge sounds like Macartney Rose. 
> ...deadly on bicycle and probably tractor tires. 
> It was used for fence rows before barbed wire.
> http://www.texasinvasives.org/plant_database/detail.php?symbol=ROBR

Multifloral Rose was likewise a common choice for hedge rows, at least on my
dad's farm in northeast Ohio, and likewise forms a very dense thorny mass.
Over the span of years when I was growing up we laboriously removed every
trace of it, except of course that you never really get every trace and to
this day the stuff will pop up in the pastures and tillable fields if my dad
doesn't mow them.

> Has anyone noticed that Osage Orange branches hang exactly at 
> tractor  operator height?  Just sayin....

Indeed, and those young flexible branches are the ones with the thorns.
There were times last summer when I looked like I'd been fighting bobcats.
The other fun thing was when one of those branches would catch the throttle
lever and/or hand clutch on the JD 620 as I was trying to slowly wind my way
past.   (At least it tended to slow down or stop the tractor, rather than
the other way around!)

> > He didn't say which green was called on, 
> > so I assumed that it was Oliver! (Grin)!
>
> He doesn't own an Oliver. He only owns good tractors!  :-)

No Oliver, true.   Although I could find room for a 77 or 88, or a 550, if
one came along... :)

> While I certainly do agree that the hedge row needs some 
> "straightening up",  dozing it out would be the wrong thing 
> to do.  I would bet it was planted so as to provide a wind 
> break for the pasture and perhaps the building site.  

This part of Ohio is quite windy as well, and I'm glad some former owner
planted a big pine windbreak to the west of the house.   The osage rows may
indeed have had a similar purpose for part of the pasture, although the
pasture fencing is now different from what it had been many years ago and
the area just downwind of the main osage row is now an apple orchard (which
itself is old and has been untended for many years, and is also on my list
of clean-up projects).   There are two main lines of osage orange, both with
very old and mature trees, but the doggone stuff has spread like crazy
through what used to be mostly open pasture land to the south.  There's more
area there but at least the trees themselves are younger and smaller.
Either way, it'll be many years of continuous gradual work to get it cleaned
up the way I'd like.

Dean Vinson
Saint Paris, Ohio