[AT] OT Osages to maples

[James Peck]

At one time, I owned a bow made of Osage Orange. Good question where it went.

Dean Vinson St. Paris Ohio AT List Member <dean at vinsonfarm.net>; About five years ago I started clearing out an old osage orange hedgerow, maybe 150 yards long, that hadn't been tended in many decades.   Lots of time with the chainsaw, lots of bonfires, lots of work with the Super M dragging logs and pulling roots and hauling firewood, lots of work with the JD 620 and rear blade grading and smoothing.   Yesterday I had a crew plant eight new red maple trees on the same line where the osage trees had been, and this afternoon I got the Super M out again to haul trashcans full of water back to them.

The top half of the attached photo is the 2014 view, showing one of my first bonfires as I began clearing out the osage and honeysuckle and briars.   My goal back then was just to clear out some breathing space around a nice mature walnut tree that I'd discovered earlier that year after noticing its top sticking up above the canopy of the older but shorter osage trees.   It's not visible in the photo but it'd be to the right of the bonfire.   After a couple of years of occasional trimming and cleanup and thinning out, I set my sights on removing the hedgerow completely.   (There's also another one, but I'm just cleaning it up and will keep many of the big trees).

The bottom half of the attached photo is the view from a few hours ago.   The mass of trees and brambles from the top photo had been just to the left of the little gravel lane behind where the tractor is now sitting.   The tall trees behind the tractor had all managed to survive despite being engulfed by the sprawling osages; the dark one in the middle is the big walnut I'd first started clearing out around five years earlier.    Interesting that those trees all lean slightly away from where the osages had been.   The new maples, hardly visible since they're small, are dead on the centerline of the original hedgerow.

Will be interesting to see how the new trees do over time.   It's been fun, sort of, plugging away at that scraggly old hedgerow over the years, and darn nice to have a couple old tractors to help.

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