"Pasture management" ??

We finally got the dozer guy out here this week.  We've been trying to get that set up since last CHRISTMAS!   But it rained most of the winter and the ground stayed so soggy it just couldn't be done.  But he finally got here on Sunday.  He  worked all day on Sunday and on Monday and made major headway. 

He cut a nice swale clear across the property and into the "pond."  (All that overgrowth on the left surrounds stumps that he will eventually remove.)

There were a number of groups of those stumps scattered around the property where we had lost huge trees in the last few storms, so he dug down around all of them so that they could be pulled up with a front loader later on.  But right now, it just looks like big ugly piles of dirt everywhere.

Here's the view of some of those stump piles from the back porch.

And while he was at it, he cleared out all the brush and the smaller trees along the fence line on the barn side.  (This IS Louisiana -- it's almost like a rain forest.  If you quit mowing a space, within a year it's completely impassable.)  We needed that space outside the fence cleared for two reasons:  first, we want to have enough space outside the pasture fences that we can ride around the edge of the property; and second, we need to have the brush cut back so the fences can be electrified without shorting out. 

Okay, so things were going along swimmingly.  We thought all the dirt work would be completed by Tuesday - Wednesday at the latest - and we were all set to get started on the fencing.  Then Monday afternoon it started to rain.  And rain.  And rain.  It's been raining every day since.  The rain did loosen that huge stump next to the pond enough that the guy was able to dislodge that one on Tuesday between downpours.  But since then the ground has gotten so soft that he can't run any heavy equipment now.  Sigh.  Will we EVER get those horses home???