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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] DR Walk-behind Bush hog
  • Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 19:11:24 EDT

I've used a DR and a BillyGoat, similar machine. There's nothing they won't
cut and grind up to 3" diameter saplings.

We have about 7 acres that need hogged every once in a while due to the
invasion of JoePie weed, iron weed, goldenrod, and ragweed. The goats will
nibble all those but since goats are hard wired not to eat below about 18" on
the
plant, it just provokes them into branching and growing more rank.

Consider the alternative of renting the machine once or twice a year rather
than buying it. The really heavy machine that sells for about $4000 rents
here
for $50 a day (24 hour rental). You could use it twice a year for 40 years
before you could pay for it. The fly in this ointment is that ten acres in a
day could be done, but it would wear you slap out!

I've got a scythe snath with a short brush blade. Well peened and honed it
fells the rankest weeds with less (yes that's LESS) effort than drovering the
big walk behind bush hog. Most people who haven't done it imagine that
scything is very heavy labor of swinging the thing like a demented samurai.
That's
not how it's done. You rest the heel of the scythe on the ground and scoot
it
along as if you were shaving the pasture. The scythe with the brush blade
stays oiled up an under the eave of the chicken coop. Whenever anyone has a
spare twenty or thirty minutes, they grab it and amuse themselves in the
pasture.
Over the course of a season the whole holding gets gone over twice or more
without anyone much breaking into a sweat over it at any one time.




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