Below are a few pictures from this morning's work at a long-abandoned cemetery in a rural area 20 minutes southeast of Lansing.
A local girl scout took it upon herself to organize an effort to clear the property and make it mowable and visitable again. The cemetery is landlocked in a wheat field, and has burials from the early 1800s onward, including veterans from the War of 1812 and the Civil War, as well as more recent conflicts. The property had not been mowed for at least forty years, and vandals had done some work on the grave markers. Inside of three hours the site was cleared, a number of large stones were righted, and the grass/weeds/scrubby trees were even raked up and hauled out!
In terms of power equipment, it was almost entirely a Stihl affair. Not much in the way of normal saw work, but there was a fair bit of work for the HT131 that someone brought. In terms of trimmers, there were more FS80/85 trimmers than any other type, and they all worked flawlessly. A few FS55 were there, too, and they ran surprisingly well in the heavy, waist-high grass. As the event had been published in the local paper with a request for volunteers, a few suburban BigBoxStore-type folks also came out to help. Their HomeDepot Ryobi/Homelite/Troy-bilt trimmers were NOT happy with this sort of work, and a couple just quit; I didn't stop to diagnose the cause. Incidentally, the green WeedEater trimmers that a couple of the suburban folks brought ran flawlessly, even in fairly heavy grass.
I started out the morning with my walk-behind brushcutter, clearing the large open areas while the string trimmer folks cleared in among the grave markers. Then my clutch cable broke at a point in the cable that I couldn't field-fix with the tools and spare parts I had at hand. So I ran the FS200 with the tri-blade for three tanks worth of cutting, and then ran a couple tanks through the Echo SRM260.
Interestingly, a number of people showed up without extra line or extra fuel, so I made my extra supply of line (anticipating this, I brought .080 and .095 line) and fuel available to folks. I received a number of comments from people who said that their trimmers were running better than ever on my fresh 93 octane + MX2T fuel mix, with smoother acceleration and what they perceived as more power.
Anyway, all in all it made for a fun way to spend an absolutely beautiful, cool Saturday morning!
The "road" in:
A view from the cemetery, looking back out to the road:
A view from the road, with the cemetery in the middle of the field where the trees are:
The wire fence had long ago toppled and was laying on the ground all intertwined with grass and weeds, so after a couple attempts at pulling it out by hand we went to plan B:
One of the dozen or so trailer loads of grass, brush, and branches that was hauled out:
The tools of the day:
A local girl scout took it upon herself to organize an effort to clear the property and make it mowable and visitable again. The cemetery is landlocked in a wheat field, and has burials from the early 1800s onward, including veterans from the War of 1812 and the Civil War, as well as more recent conflicts. The property had not been mowed for at least forty years, and vandals had done some work on the grave markers. Inside of three hours the site was cleared, a number of large stones were righted, and the grass/weeds/scrubby trees were even raked up and hauled out!
In terms of power equipment, it was almost entirely a Stihl affair. Not much in the way of normal saw work, but there was a fair bit of work for the HT131 that someone brought. In terms of trimmers, there were more FS80/85 trimmers than any other type, and they all worked flawlessly. A few FS55 were there, too, and they ran surprisingly well in the heavy, waist-high grass. As the event had been published in the local paper with a request for volunteers, a few suburban BigBoxStore-type folks also came out to help. Their HomeDepot Ryobi/Homelite/Troy-bilt trimmers were NOT happy with this sort of work, and a couple just quit; I didn't stop to diagnose the cause. Incidentally, the green WeedEater trimmers that a couple of the suburban folks brought ran flawlessly, even in fairly heavy grass.
I started out the morning with my walk-behind brushcutter, clearing the large open areas while the string trimmer folks cleared in among the grave markers. Then my clutch cable broke at a point in the cable that I couldn't field-fix with the tools and spare parts I had at hand. So I ran the FS200 with the tri-blade for three tanks worth of cutting, and then ran a couple tanks through the Echo SRM260.
Interestingly, a number of people showed up without extra line or extra fuel, so I made my extra supply of line (anticipating this, I brought .080 and .095 line) and fuel available to folks. I received a number of comments from people who said that their trimmers were running better than ever on my fresh 93 octane + MX2T fuel mix, with smoother acceleration and what they perceived as more power.
Anyway, all in all it made for a fun way to spend an absolutely beautiful, cool Saturday morning!
The "road" in:
A view from the cemetery, looking back out to the road:
A view from the road, with the cemetery in the middle of the field where the trees are:
The wire fence had long ago toppled and was laying on the ground all intertwined with grass and weeds, so after a couple attempts at pulling it out by hand we went to plan B:
One of the dozen or so trailer loads of grass, brush, and branches that was hauled out:
The tools of the day:
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