Land clearing project, breaking in new grapple

[GinNB]

Here's a few pics I took today of a land clearing project to turn it from old cutover woods into wild blueberry land. There's close to 5 acres finished so far this fall in this field and I think we're just about done.

Some interesting (to me anyway) statistics is that I tanked up the tractor at the start of the project and have logged 33 tractor hours and the fuel light just blinked on for a short time just before dark. 6.5 hrs/acre to remove and pile the brush outside the boundaries of a rough field. Avg travel speed carrying brushpiles is under 2mph. 175l tank (say 160l used, not sure the reserve after the light comes on), 33hrs, 105hp mfwd tractor giving under 5 litres/hour for fuel usage under light use.

 

[rvaitor]

Looks good, I've got a similar project I'm working on. Did you use the tractor to knock down the trees or just gather them up? Are you using anything to rake or clear up the small stuff? and how about smoothing the dirt afterwards?

Moving Dirt

 

[wedge40]

Nice job. Did you get any in between photos. You show a stand of brush and then the tractor hauling it to the burn pile. What happened in between? Also the last photo looks the tractor is some sort of flame thrower.

Wedge

 

[GinNB]

The trees were knocked down by chainsaw and brushsaw. There's no real "inbetween" photos, unfortunately. I only thought to take pictures near the end. The picture of the standing trees shows the section that's next to clear, mostly because it shows an idea of what the cleared section was like "before".

Lots of the twigs, etc were bunched up using the root rake with the teeth in a vertical position and using a gentle hand on the loader boom control to follow the contours of the ground. Ground speed while doing this was .6mph (got a digital speed readout mounted to the right side in the cab that I don't think shows in the pics). It's tricky because the teeth still caught on the existing stumps, rocks, etc. They weren't removed because they're too fresh- green stump removal also removes the blueberry sod. I haven't come up with a better idea for cleaning up the twigs- tried a landscape rake before and it just twisted the tines up when it hit the stumps.

The gizmo behind the IH 584 is a blueberry burner. It kills the plants so that they send up new and vigorous shoots. The roots and rhizomes survive after the burning. I'll spray this field with Velpar in the spring to kill the grass, hardhacks, goldenrods, or whatever else may pop up. Each stump of the hardwoods that were cut was sprayed with Roundup as soon as it was cut. After a few years the burning will remove more of the twigs, but the best twig removal method is to level the ground to the point that it can be flail mowed. No time left to do that this fall, so it'll have to wait another cycle (2 years) before we can even think of levelling it.

None of the dirt will be smoothed soon because of the blueberry sod. After the stumps rot (burning helps soften them up faster too), the ground will be levelled with an excavator. It will pluck out the remaining rocks/stumps, pile them up, and reach behind and under the humps in the land to pull the soil from the high spots into the low spots. After that, either the excavator will track the loose ground to smooth it or we'll bring in a dozer hauling a big roller to make it flat again.

 

[GinNB]

rvaitor, just looked at your land clearing pics. That track loader looks like a handy piece of equipment. Wish we could rip trees out that easily and have the blueberries come back, but they won't. We've got an old Cat D7 we use to haul our roller, but it's almost 60 years old and quite tired. As a matter of fact, there's one old fellow that stops by every year and leaves a saucer of milk in front of our "Cat" as a treat.

 

[flaming-ace]

great pics!

what chainsaw were you using?

could you post some more pictures of that blueberry burner?

 

[GinNB]

The chainsaw was an old Jonsered something or other with the decal fallen off of it, along with a Jonsered RS45 and Husqvarna 265 for the brushsaws.

Here's a pic from my cellphone of that burner in operation at a different field. There's also a bit better pic of the same burner NOT in operation. I think you'll be able to tell why after looking at the pic closely...

 

[dawoodwa]

The chainsaw was an old Jonsered something or other with the decal fallen off of it, along with a Jonsered RS45 and Husqvarna 265 for the brushsaws.

Here's a pic from my cellphone of that burner in operation at a different field. There's also a bit better pic of the same burner NOT in operation. I think you'll be able to tell why after looking at the pic closely...

Interesting way of parking the tractor............

 

[GinNB]

It was a bit tired and tripped over a steep dip that isn't well shown in that picture. Rear tires are set out a bit wider now.

 

[rvaitor]

rvaitor, just looked at your land clearing pics. That track loader looks like a handy piece of equipment. Wish we could rip trees out that easily and have the blueberries come back, but they won't. We've got an old Cat D7 we use to haul our roller, but it's almost 60 years old and quite tired. As a matter of fact, there's one old fellow that stops by every year and leaves a saucer of milk in front of our "Cat" as a treat.

It's very handy but I'm not getting to use it like I'd like. Will probably try and get some stuff done over the winter.