Green Hills Preserve in winter

We’re gearing up for a workday this week at Green Hills—to remove autumn olive and other invasives from a section of the preserve—and I snapped a few photos while scouting the project site:

We do a few group workdays each winter, when staff from all over can convene to knock out a large project. Here we’ll be using chainsaws to remove autumn olive, dragging it out to the closest place we can reach with the chipper, and chipping the shrubs onto trails and the woods edge. We’ll be doing a similar project on Serpentine barrens at Willisbrook Preserve the following week, weather permitting. By that we mean cold and dry; we need the ground frozen enough to get the truck and chipper in place. (These are the same conditions we need to mow meadows as well.) In winter sites like this are far more accessible than once summer’s growth starts.

While at Green Hills on Sunday a brief snow squall passed.

Posted by Daniel Barringer on February 18, 2013.