From Forest to Pasture

When we purchased this farm 78 acres of the 100 acres total was under bluegum plantation. The lease had another five years to run, so we didn't make too many plans for that area. In a suprise move the plantation owners had to wind up the company and part of that process was to harvest all the trees.

So, in February this year the harvest started and we are now in the process of turning the land back to pasture. It will take a few posts to show what is going on, today is the "before" pictures.

This is the extent of the land we're dealing with. The plantation area is edged in green, and for comparison the area we have to use at the moment is edged in blue. The red arrow points to my house, for a sense of perspective. If you click on the image you can make it bigger.

A couple of google "street view" shots from down the Sledge Track, the middle one shows some of our current pasture on the left. We have a new boundary fence since then ...

These two shots show the plantation from our main gate right before the harvest started. You can see how dry it was this summer.