195 Acres Southern OK

Gonna see that fire from space! Beautiful work there. And do post a better picture of that tree.

Just a guess but I bet not competing for water with those cedars is going to help those deciduous trees a lot.
 
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Last spring and summer I had a cedar cutter working on the west side of my farm. There were 10-15 acres that were heavily infested with cedar. He left such a mess behind. There were piles and slash everywhere. It was very disheartening to even drive through there. Instead of trying clean it up, I decided to wait until this year and run a fire through the west side of the farm. That area was nearly all closed canopy. Some areas of heavy cedar, other a mix of elms, oaks and honey locust. Woody greenbrier he climbed most trees all the way to the top. Many areas were nearly impenetrable. I had done some moderate TSI in areas I could access.

I had utilized prescribed fire on an old overgrown pasture 2 years ago and had the help of a gentleman who had been conducting prescribed burns for 3 decades. We got together and got a plan put in place for this timber burn. We also recently got a PBA put together for our county. I got a neighbor to help as well as the fire boss, his helper and a few guys from our Volunteer FD. Having the brush trucks there sure provides some piece of mind.

We started about 9:30 am and wrapped up around 3:00. Some of the slash piles were pretty intense. Same with some of the cedars that were covered in greenbrier.
It was a great success, the burn boss was very pleased with the results. There were areas where access and visibility were zero, it’s amazing how much things have opened up. I can’t wait to see how it looks after things begin to green up. I’m going to continue to monitor how much sun reaching the forest floor and cut what trees need to be cut.







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I had 16 huge piles of cedar stacked up after some late winter clearing. It’s amazing how tight and high my skid steer can stack those things.
I was able to burn off 8 of 16.

We also got over 3.5” of rain yesterday. Pretty great week at the farm
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We had great rutting activity around the weekend of 11/12. Numerous different buck sightings over a few days. One thing that is fun on my place is the bucks show up out of nowhere. I won’t see them in camera all fall, and boom, they show up overnight at scrapes that we have cams on.

Things slowed down a bit this past weekend. I saw more doe that never, but the buck sightings dropped off tremendously. My son and I were out in hopes of getting his first buck. He’s 11 and chomping at the bit to get his first buck on the ground
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One of the highlights of the season is a location where I got many of these pics. It is an area at the south entrance of a food plot that was nearly 100% closed canopy and was probably 80%+ mature cedar. Many of the pics from previous post of our burn last year highlighted the clearing we did in that area. It used to be a wasteland with little to no deer movement, it was nearly impassable. After the clearing and burn, it opened it up drastically. We would see deer in there all spring and summer and now it’s a hotspot for fall activity!


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Great job with the burns! Did you guys ever get one during rifle season? I did not but I am still going to bowhunt a couple hours here and there as weather and time permit. Here is a video I did yesterday of clearing mainly cedar to open our pasture up some more...get past the cows and dozer maintenance section and a small pond dike pack and I am into some pretty thick cedar...
 
We didn’t get one in rifle season. HS football playoff schedule interfered a little making it tough to get to the farm. He’s wasn’t real happy about tagging along to games, but he’s got an archery tag as well. Maybe we can get him out with his crossbow.

Great work with the dozer. I need one of those! I’m looking forward to a few of the new openings we are going to create over the next month or so


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I got a new toy delivered to the farm yesterday. I’m looking forward to this planting season. I’ve been utilizing throw n mow for 3 years, but the time has been the biggest challenge. This should definitely be a time saver. My results with TnM have been varied and in drier years, it really seems to suffer more than traditional planting. I plant mostly a mix of cereal grains, AWP and brassicas.
I plan on adding to my dove field as well and will plant some sunflowers here shortly after we burn off a pasture that I sprayed.
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I went with the 6ft model with the upgraded 13” cultipacker

It’s a beast


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Nice looking machine! Should do the job. Over the years I have tried planting methods to "simulate" a seeder. Lightly creating furrows with a chisel plow is best so far. Did not use my tiller to initially prepare soil for past two years but bringing it back out next September
 
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