grayswan
New member
Hi there,
I've been looking at this site for a few days and you all seem to really know you're stuff so I thought I'd get some advice from anyone nice enough to offer it.
My wife and I found and bought our dream land last October in northeast Vermont, Essex county. 30 acres on the southeast side of a gently sloping hill with amazing mountain views. The land has been completely deforested except for about 20-30 huge spruces which I'm happy leave alone for the most part. All the stumps remain except where a 1500 ft road was cut in to a house clearing at the highest point. The elevation goes from about 1500' to about 1650'. The grading of the property starts off relatively flat and twists to a 15-20 degree grade towards the far end. There are many small streamlets that run through the property, some of which come together and flow down the side of the driveway from the house clearing to the bottom of the hill where they had washed out the drive way in two places. I had the sellers put in two culverts last October to deal with this. The plan was to come up after the winter and build a small cabin at the house clearing and then start to work the land. However when we got there this last may, both culverts had been washed out and there was two 6' wide ditches across the driveway where they'd been. So that's the background story...
So I need to repair the culverts, keep the 1500 driveway usable, remove the majority of the stumps, terrace about 1/3rd of the property for gardens and fruit trees (we're big permaculture / sepp holzer fans), build at least two 20-30ft fishponds / reservoirs, till up about 5-8 acres for field planting, move more rocks than I can count, and other uses that I haven't foreseen.
So I'm trying to determine what kind of tractor / excavator or combination thereof I should buy for my needs.. or if I should hire the bigger parts of this work out. However I'd much rather come up with justification for buying the equipment (used) and doing the work myself. I'm in my 30s and hard work doesn't scare me but I do want to go about this as cost conscious as I can. With all the work I need to have done it seems like it might be cheaper to buy the equipment and do it myself but I just don't have the experience or the knowledge to know if this work would be cheaper to hire out. Also I will need farming equipment to work the land even after the terraforming is done so that is a consideration as well. Any recommendations, ideas and opinions are very welcome. Thank you for reading.
I've been looking at this site for a few days and you all seem to really know you're stuff so I thought I'd get some advice from anyone nice enough to offer it.
My wife and I found and bought our dream land last October in northeast Vermont, Essex county. 30 acres on the southeast side of a gently sloping hill with amazing mountain views. The land has been completely deforested except for about 20-30 huge spruces which I'm happy leave alone for the most part. All the stumps remain except where a 1500 ft road was cut in to a house clearing at the highest point. The elevation goes from about 1500' to about 1650'. The grading of the property starts off relatively flat and twists to a 15-20 degree grade towards the far end. There are many small streamlets that run through the property, some of which come together and flow down the side of the driveway from the house clearing to the bottom of the hill where they had washed out the drive way in two places. I had the sellers put in two culverts last October to deal with this. The plan was to come up after the winter and build a small cabin at the house clearing and then start to work the land. However when we got there this last may, both culverts had been washed out and there was two 6' wide ditches across the driveway where they'd been. So that's the background story...
So I need to repair the culverts, keep the 1500 driveway usable, remove the majority of the stumps, terrace about 1/3rd of the property for gardens and fruit trees (we're big permaculture / sepp holzer fans), build at least two 20-30ft fishponds / reservoirs, till up about 5-8 acres for field planting, move more rocks than I can count, and other uses that I haven't foreseen.
So I'm trying to determine what kind of tractor / excavator or combination thereof I should buy for my needs.. or if I should hire the bigger parts of this work out. However I'd much rather come up with justification for buying the equipment (used) and doing the work myself. I'm in my 30s and hard work doesn't scare me but I do want to go about this as cost conscious as I can. With all the work I need to have done it seems like it might be cheaper to buy the equipment and do it myself but I just don't have the experience or the knowledge to know if this work would be cheaper to hire out. Also I will need farming equipment to work the land even after the terraforming is done so that is a consideration as well. Any recommendations, ideas and opinions are very welcome. Thank you for reading.
