You get fired up, dive into a project, make great progress, but can’t quite finish it up right away. That last little bit though…it seems to hang over you forever, not quite getting to the finish line. Or maybe it’s just me? If you saw yourself in that opening, you might be sabotaging your preps.
Example: A tale with two endings
Last year we did a big project at The Place. The Place, if you haven’t met it in earlier posts, is our bug-out-location, weekend retreat, and hunting/fishing/wildlife spot. It’s about twenty-five acres of woods and prairie patches with pond and cabin.
Well, we bought The Place about six years ago, and by last year, the bigger of the prairie patches was starting to close up as the woods encroached. We didn’t want to lose that bit of prairie; it’s not only good wildlife habitat and pretty, but it’s a great shooting range for deer. The deer come out of the surrounding woods to forage the prairie, giving us a hundred yard sight range with a safe shooting backdrop. Perfect.
The trees were more than Salty and I could take out ourselves, so we hired a guy with a Giant Chain Maul of Doom* to smash the encroaching trees into toothpicks. The full story is here. In one afternoon, a good chunk of the job was done.
Two days before, this clearing had been clogged with invading cedars and low-quality oaks. They got mulched, but the stumps were hidden.
A potential finish
What we needed to finish was to kill the stumps of the hardwoods that had been taken down. Cut an oak down and the stump sprouts an ‘oak bush’: a whole bunch of shoots, each of which will grow into a full tree. They should’ve been named Hydras, not oaks.
The last bit to finish the project was to paint stump killer on the stubs of the hardwoods. The trouble was, last summer I couldn’t *find* them. Those trees had been thoroughly shredded and the stumps were buried under the mulch somewhere.
If we’d have left the project there, the trouble and expense of getting those trees removed would not only have been undone in about five years, but the (former) clearing would have been much more occluded than if we’d done nothing. The bushy sprouts would have quickly spoiled the firing lines and covered the prairie, and been a pain to remove as well.
…and here’s the real finish.
So I spent this first decent-enough day of the year out on that clearing with a supersized pair of loppers and some Tordon RTU.** Through last summer the ‘oak bushes’ grew up enough that I found them among the mulch, prairie grasses, and blackberries.
One year old ‘oak bushes’ sprouted from the stumps of the trees demolished last spring.
It closely resembled work. Hiring the guy with the Giant Chain Maul of Doom was way faster, too. In fact, I’ll have to go back and finish it another day. But for that effort, we’ll keep the land in good shape for as long as we’ll be able to get around on it.
Big loppers, bottle of stump killer, and protective gloves were needed for the finish.
The moral of the story
A 90% complete prep is often about 50% as useful as a fully finished prep. Rain barrels good. Rain barrels with drip irrigation lines attached, Wonderful. Rifle bought, good. Rifle owner skilled in its use and care; that’s a Real prep. Israeli bandages bought, good. Israeli bandages near to hand when the blood’s spurting; potentially life-saving.
Are their any projects you’ve got mostly done that you can finish off and get full value for your efforts?
* Not what the manufacturer calls them. But it should be. Manufacturer, if you’re reading this, you may have the name as my gift to you.
** As always, we’ve got no financial interest in any products we talk about. We just found them useful.