Oh, geez Teacake not only do you have to put up with your mothers negative comments that IMHO are invalidating, but now you end up with poisen ivy whilst trying to claim some land you can hack and till and turn and make productive.

Well, poisen ivy is tough, you either have to cut it down "carefully with gloves" or spray it with a chemical to kill it. The best time of year to cut it down is "after" the leaves drop off so you can just focus on removing the vines. If you are going to use a chemical, then you need to do that when the leaves are there to absorb the poisen, but you will still have to cut back the vines so you can get it out of the way. You can weed wack it with a weed wacker, but you have to really cover up and wear protective glasses because a weed wacker tends to spray just what you don't want sprayed. A lawnmower can get poisen ivy on the ground, if you don't have rocks etc there too.

I am lucky that I am not real allergic to it because I had to deal with a lot of it when I hacked away and cleared my own property as my property was very over grown when I moved here, just my house on a small patch of grass and the rest was very overgrown with all kinds of prickers, poisen ivy, and sumack that grew like trees. I invested in a nice pair of clippers and took to constantly clearing mostly during the winter and early spring when I did not have any foliage to deal with. My husband is very allergic to poisen ivy so I had to clear it away so he could cut down trees. I found that the clearing of my land was very rewarding, gave me a sense of control/reward seeing how my efforts were showing me the land hidden under all that crap.

The place you have described sound neat Teacake.