Fence-line clearing

What it is

The work is a corridor. Brush and smaller trees come off the strip where the fence will stand or already stands. Old wire, posts, and buried scraps come out only when that removal is written down. Vegetation hides wire, so the walkthrough is when that wire gets looked for.

When a landowner needs it

It fits a new fence on a brushy line, an old fence that can no longer be seen, or a boundary that has to be walked before anyone sets a post. Property corners are confirmed on site with you. The corridor follows the line you walk.

Process and machines

Walk the line. Agree which side to work, where the corners and gates are, and how wide the strip must be for the post crew and for later maintenance. Then clear that strip. A skid steer or compact track loader with a forestry mulching head is the usual machine when the growth is woody brush. Slope and rock along a Hill Country boundary can move the corridor or stop it.

What changes the price

Length of line, width of the strip, brush density, rocks at the post line, and gates or water gaps all change the time. Pulling wire is extra because it is a different task from mulching stems.

Season

Where a fence line meets oaks, cutting a limb or skinning a trunk is a wound. Keep that cut out of February through June when the fence schedule allows, and paint the wound immediately when it does not.

Do not wound oaks from February through June. Sap beetles that spread oak wilt are most active then, and a fresh cut is how the fungus gets in. Paint every oak wound immediately, in any month. Texas A&M Forest Service counts land clearing and cedar clearing as wound sources, the same as pruning. Texas Oak Wilt sets the window as February 1 through June 30 and includes fresh stumps and damaged roots.

Mulching leaves chips on the ground. If that material is piled to burn later, a county burn ban can stop the burn. A county judge or the commissioners court sets the ban, and Texas A&M Forest Service posts a statewide map of which counties are under one.

On the Edwards Plateau, golden-cheeked warblers nest in juniper-oak woodland. They return in early to mid-March, lay eggs in April, and leave from late June to mid-August. If the tract is that woodland, look at the calendar before opening it in spring.

Hill Country and South Texas ground

A Kendall or Bandera fence line can cross shallow rocky clay, such as Eckrant, with Ashe juniper in the wire. A Wilson or Guadalupe line crosses sand or clay, with oak woodland. A Medina line can be mesquite and huisache. Clearing the corridor does not change the ground the posts have to stand in.

Kendall, Bandera, and Comal counties sit on the Eastern Edwards Plateau: shallow soil over limestone, with Ashe juniper, honey mesquite, Texas red oak, and yaupon. Ashe juniper is the tree people call cedar. Guadalupe and Wilson counties are Post Oak Savannah, oak woodland and grassland on sand and clay. Medina County is South Texas Plains, where the brush is mesquite, acacia, and prickly pear. Huisache (Acacia farnesiana) is on the South Texas browse list, and it sprouts again on disturbed ground. The town pages describe the soils in each place.

What the land looks like afterward

On steep Eckrant and rock-outcrop ground in Bandera County, a line drawn on a map can cross a slope a carrier cannot stand on. The walked line is the one that gets cleared. What remains is a mulched strip wide enough for the agreed fence work. Posts and wire are a later job. Mesquite sprouts from a buried crown if only the top is cut, so a mulched stem can grow back. Follow-up is part of keeping a field open.