We are very fortunate to live at the end of the lane, the road, the Trail as we call it. It has a unique privacy but close enough to neighbors and a state highway that has us only a short journey to town. Trees, pastures, hay fields and creeks surround us. While none of this is an expansive area, it is our own little oasis, our little piece of heaven.
But, as with anything, there is always and always upkeep - especially in Arkansas where we aren’t called The Natural State for nothing. It is all natural with enough rainfall annually to keep everything, I do mean everything, grown up and covered up with vegetation, and not to exclude the wildlife this includes. Our priority and our problem for the last 30+ years has been to maintain the roadway back to our home, which is about ¼ of a mile long. While others have had road easements to get to their properties, the weight of the responsibility and the cost has somehow been mostly on us.
Last year we did a roadway overhaul and updated culverts, dug out ditches, cleared fence lines and added more gravel. While this has been a great help in many ways and a much-needed fix, it wasn’t the end of the work. Piles of trees and brush couldn’t be burned last year until it was dried up enough to burn. By then we were hit with a major drought at the end of the summer. Too much rain in the fall and winter and for various other reasons, the piles didn’t get burned.
For the past several weeks the husband has been nearly killing himself trying to ready the piles for burning. They were completely grown up with grass and weeds. When he got this taken care of, there was much debris left behind from the bulldozer work and the trash that had been left in the ditches, mostly rocks, bricks, broken glass, etc. This all had to be hauled off. Finally and at last, it was ready for burning and today it was accomplished!
The very good news is that it was done with the help of the local Volunteer Fire Department. How blessed are we!
~ Gwen of IRISH ACRES
