Reclaiming overgrown land

[jk96]

Very nice. How many hours do you have into each of those? Could easily sell for $500 a pop.

I would guess about 6-8 hours. Boards are oak from an old post and beam barn. My concrete contractor when building the house had the barn on his property and told me to take what I wanted before he torched it. Most was rotted away but I was able to salvage some nice beams and some heart pine. If I can find a pic Ill post the coffee table we had made from it. Just beautiful wood.

Right now Im starting on one more flag. Going to surprise the owner of the old barn with it as a thank you and a piece of history he can pass on.

 

[jk96]

This thread came to an quick halt last year when work took over and hasn't let up since. I'm finally getting ready to start cleaning things up around here again. I've been looking for a track loader and finally found the unit I was looking for with the options I wanted, Case TR340. Number one option was high flow hydraulics. There are a lot of used ones on the market but very few with the high flow option which I wanted for running a heavy duty brush cutter. I found this one used about 4 hours from me and picked up last week. It's a 2016 model with 1,100 hours but seems to have had a pretty easy life so far. It also has a factory warranty on the machine until November of 2019 and all emissions related items until 2021 which takes some of the worry out of purchasing used. Just ordered the brush cutter today. Unfortunately it looks like about 3 weeks until they can get it built and delivered. I'll start updated pics and progress again once I get the cutter in and get started.

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[nybirdman]

Nice machine and the proper tool for the job.I fought the brush for ten years with tractors and finally hired a SS with a FECON head.Best money I ever spent.Now we can maintain with the tractors.

 

[Redlands Okie]

Nice looking equipment, have fun

 

[lt190b]

This thread came to an quick halt last year when work took over and hasn't let up since. I'm finally getting ready to start cleaning things up around here again. I've been looking for a track loader and finally found the unit I was looking for with the options I wanted, Case TR340. Number one option was high flow hydraulics. There are a lot of used ones on the market but very few with the high flow option which I wanted for running a heavy duty brush cutter. I found this one used about 4 hours from me and picked up last week. It's a 2016 model with 1,100 hours but seems to have had a pretty easy life so far. It also has a factory warranty on the machine until November of 2019 and all emissions related items until 2021 which takes some of the worry out of purchasing used. Just ordered the brush cutter today. Unfortunately it looks like about 3 weeks until they can get it built and delivered. I'll start updated pics and progress again once I get the cutter in and get started.

2018-09-05_01-27-10

2018-09-05_01-25-38

2018-09-05_01-26-54

2018-09-05_01-26-24

What cutter did you order?

 

[jk96]

What cutter did you order?

After a lot of looking and pricing I finally took my dealers recommendation and ordered a CID. It's the 78" Extreme high flow model and added the optional mulching teeth to the blade carrier disk. It's rated for 7" material. Most of what I plan to cut would be 5" tops. Anything larger I would most likely turn into firewood.

 

[jk96]

Nice machine and the proper tool for the job.I fought the brush for ten years with tractors and finally hired a SS with a FECON head.Best money I ever spent.Now we can maintain with the tractors.

After the time spent last year clearing with my tractor I came to the conclusion that I was going to end up tearing up a very nice CUT trying to clear with it and my brushhog. So far I've only been able to get in about 2 hours of seat time on the CTL but I'm finding that I really like the ISO controls. You can switch between H pattern or ISO. I have a small amount of time with H pattern controls on a rental unit however the ISO controls are really nice. Left hand controls the movement of the machine and right hand is the loader control which is exactly the same as my Case tractor. The power is a amazing as well. It has an operating capacity of 3,400 lbs (50% of tip) so I was able to move some 1,500 lb pallets of stone my tractor was struggling with like they were empty pallets.

 

[jk96]

Still waiting on my cutter to arrive however I picked up a grapple for the loader and spent a little time cleaning up on of the tree lines near the house. There is no comparison in the power of the loader vs my tractor. I've found that I can push over 6" trees and pull them out of the ground roots and all easily with the grapple. 8" trees take a little more work breaking roots before pushing them over and pulling from the ground. Here's a few pics of the grapple and before/after of the first tree line I started working on.

Tree line before clearing. It was overgrown to the point that it was hard to walk through.

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Pics of new grapple

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Tree line after clearing


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[oosik]

I just realized something - this homestead has been in our family now for 80 years. I've lived on it for 36+ years. There is no such thing as overgrown property around here. All I have is field grass and Ponderosa pines. Field grass is always the same height and thickness and the big pines eventually die, fall down and rot away. No vines, no berries with their nasty thorns, no poison oak, ivy or sumac - nothing with big thorns. Just tan, dead grass - right now - and huge tall trees.

View attachment 572068 The view off the front porch - across the little lake and on to my property beyond.

 

[jk96]

I just realized something - this homestead has been in our family now for 80 years. I've lived on it for 36+ years. There is no such thing as overgrown property around here. All I have is field grass and Ponderosa pines. Field grass is always the same height and thickness and the big pines eventually die, fall down and rot away. No vines, no berries with their nasty thorns, no poison oak, ivy or sumac - nothing with big thorns. Just tan, dead grass - right now - and huge tall trees.

View attachment 572068 The view off the front porch - across the little lake and on to my property beyond.

Nice looking property. Ours is full of bush honeysuckle which is an invasive plant. Also a lot of thorn plants, vines, etc. It thick to the point that a lot of areas are difficult to walk through. It going to take a lot of work getting it back in shape.