A huge project we tackled this summer was ripping out the rotting and falling-down fence that both circled and divided our land. Our property is two properties joined together, so having a useless fence split it down the middle was both annoying and an eyesore! It also showed us the transience of fencing--though it had undoubtedly been a HUGE amount of work to get those posts in the ground originally, they were rotted, falling apart, and had we tried to use them to contain livestock, we would have been livestock-less in short order.
But we now need some sort of fence! At the moment, our birds free-range, and our goats are on a picket lines, but this is not the ideal. We want to help heal this area through directed, intensive grazing, so eventually we'll need a way to both direct and hedge in animals. Enter the Osage Orange!
Though it will take a LOT longer to get established than a summer of fence-stringing, we've decided to implement a living hedge to both encircle and protect our property. The eventual design will use osage, cedar, and locust trees, and instead of decomposing, will grow stronger and denser with time and maintenance. We like knowing that farmers and ranchers of this area's past built their homesteads using the same techniques--so we're excited to carry on practice (and actually learn how to maintain it as we go).
So Andrew's starting a new YouTube series documenting our process and learning curve! Step one is identifying and collecting enough seeds to get started--watch the video below!
Osage Orange is a FASCINATING tree, by the way. The firewood has the highest BTU output of any wood in America, so all the trimmings from our hedge maintenance will keep us warm. It's also super-fine bow wood material, so our eventual hopes of making our own bows will also be supplied by these awesome trees! According to one of our bowery books, native people of the past were willing to trade a horse and a good blanket for a staff of Osage wood. Sounds good to us!
Do you have any ancient practices on your land? Have any of you ever used Osage Orange? We're still in the learning-how-this-works stage, so we'd love to hear from you!
Other places to find Simple Life Homestead Online!
Blog: http://www.simplelifehomestead.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwDzB6sjt8sZfB9hVUojxrQ
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SimpleLifeHomestead/
Twitter: @SLHomestead
Ha Ha if you want some, I can send you a truck load of them! I had my girls load up wagons full of them and we dumped them all into "the pit" where we are trying to fill in a hole to prevent erosion.
The Osage grows very well on my farm south of KC. Along with the Honey Locust, Osage is everywhere here and Hedge Apples hurt when they fall an you!!
Because of it's properties, I am going to remove the "T" post fencing from the front of our farm and replace it with 6' Osage posts as well as making pens for livestock.
I plan on girdling a few trees to use as firewood for next year in the next few weeks.
Your video sparked an idea for me and I want to say thank you for that. The BTUs are around 32k whereas Oak and Hickory are around 27k if I remember correctly. My goal was to plant some Oaks, Hickory and Maples but with all the hedge apples I already have I may as well just plant them too. Thanks for sharing!
Kenny
@PfeilerFam5
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That's awesome! Sheesh, I bet it _would_hurt to get clobbered by a falling fruit. I'm sure we'll have that experience soon enough.
We're so delighted that something we're learning can help someone else. Keep us updated with how the project goes!
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It's so neat that you are going about it free. Living fences is a lost tradition here, but people are slowly redescovering it again.
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I like your name, @frugallady! We love finding frugal ways to live better out here. They have living fences in Denmark (I'm assuming that's where you're talking based on your profile)? What did they use to make them?
I feel like there's so much old knowledge that has been lost. If I had a time machine, I wouldn't go to any huge, notable historical event--I'd travel to the country, find some homesteaders, and just ask them to teach me what they know!
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Thank you :)
Amen to that last comment. Have you seen the BBC farm series with Ruth Goodman and some others? They are amazing in my opinion.
They do, but it's never been as pronounced as in GB for instance, they are the champs of living fences. Here they use different things, some use edible fences, others thorny, non-edible ones. I'm not sure what the names are in English though.
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I'll have to check those programs out! We're huge fans of a lot of BBC stuff, mostly anything narrated by Sir David Attenborough.
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