The stockyard saga continued...

A while ago I posted about the barbed wire festooning the grass in the stockyard. It had proven very difficult to remove. In the end John and I opted to wade in there with chains, and weave the chains through the clumps of barbed wire. Then we attached the chains to the Hilux (in 4WD mode), and backed the Hilux out, dragging the wire out in clumps wreathed with grass. Once out, we roll them up into semi-manageable rolls. Quite satisfying if we managed a large 'catch' (the biggest single draw catch is proudly shown by one of our cats, Sunny, who of course helped haul it in ;-) ).

The rolls are then gingerly hoicked onto the back of the work ute ready for taking to the tip. In all, it's taken us two full days (spread over a couple of weekends) to clear the yard. It's been prickly work: after yesterday's efforts, our hands were covered in scratches and small perforations from all the barbs. Ouch!

But now as you can see the horses can freely graze in the yards. In the photo are some of our herd: from L to R: Saturn, Emu, Gandhi and the Horse Formerly Known as Rascal (we're trying to change his name but not doing too well as you would have noticed).

I have used a similar technique to remove lantana, blackberries and other weed entanglements. Once I worked with a local Landcare group to remove dense entanglements of lantana under a huge old fig. We had a mate with us who had a merry little terrier. We threw scraps of meat into the tangled undergrowth. We tied fishing line to my friend's terrier and he'd go in and find the meat and then come out. Then we'd tie a long snatch strap to the fishing line and pull it through. We then tied the snatch strap to the car I had at the time (an old Pajero) and pull the entire clump of lantana out! Worked a treat. Dog loved it.