Those Pesky Maple Trees!

It's so  nice to have family near. When I started my vineyard a few years ago I expected to have two rows of grape vines. The vines had a different idea. They took off on the west row and the east row died. Totally. All I was growing on that trellis was bindweed and volunteer maple trees. Today was the day to tackle the trees. Pull them one by one or take down the trellis and mow the suckers?  I voted for mowing.

I got the support wires off fairly easily with my handy dandy bolt cutters, but how to remove the t-posts? The ground was soft, but there was no wiggling them out. I dug out 2 1/2 of 5 and ran out of steam. I called my son. Can you finish this?

  "Piece of cake, Mom. We have a t-post puller. I'll send Lisa over with it."

 A bit later, here comes my lovely daughter-in-law with this bright red gadget I'd never seen before. It works like Grandma's old waterpump from the farm. You attach the tool to the t-post and pump the handle. It just lifts that baby out of the ground! Whoo-hoo!  Lisa did one and let me do the other two. That was a fun toy!

She had also brought a crow-bar to use as a handle to unscrew the ground anchors. It was too thick for the eye hole but we found one of the 16" spikes I bought to make the raised beds. It fit nicely and Lisa had the muscle to unscrew both of them.

As it happens, she is using t-posts to build a fence at her place, so she happily took my t-posts and the ground anchors. I couldn't wait to fire up the riding lawn mower and say Bye Bye! to all those trees.