I'm a Brush Clearing Fiend! :)

I spent the afternoon doing one of my favorite activities, clearing brush on our property! We are lucky enough to live on 26.5 acres in the countryside, and our property is covered with meadows, oak, madrone, manzanita, and lots of nasty, icky scrub brush. (Also a fair amount of poison oak, ack!) A couple of years ago I got some heavy duty pruning shears and began cutting down some of the bushes and making piles as I went. I discovered that many of the branches would break if I used weight or leverage so I use a combination of these two methods to remove the bushes. There are now dozens and dozens of enormous (about 8-10' x 8-10' x 6-7' tall) piles scattered around our lower forest and meadows, and the difference I've made is really amazing. It is very gratifying to walk around and see what I've done, and it looks so much better. Clearing brush is really good exercise too, and I sure do need that! It's hard to stop at the end of the day because I just want to clear ONE MORE SPOT! :D One thing that I find interesting is that over the course of a year, a pile that was once 8-7' tall will sink by FEET! Also, those piles, which we would like to eventually burn or send through a chipper, are probably home to all sorts of animals for now; probably a very nice refuge from the larger predators that cannot penetrate the dense pile.