Up on the Meredith ridges the wind gets to a property before anyone else does, and by late summer the hayfield edges have crept a little closer to every lawn in the township. Iron Ridge Property Management pushes them back — mowing, string trimming, keeping the grass around houses, sheds and drives cut to a line that holds against the field. Out here a place can go feral in three weeks of July rain, so the schedule is the whole strategy. The payoff shows up from the road: turf held even, borders defined, a house sitting in its clearing instead of disappearing into it. Cleanups bracket the year, mud season at one end and the leaves at the other, in East Meredith and the hill towns nearby.