Here are some pics of the start of the clearing. All in all, my goal for this initial clearing, was to open up the land enough to get a good idea of where the best location to put a house will be. I figured I'd clear about an acre and thin out the rest, then go from there, not just clear cutting everything I see.
The woods were thick, most of it was smaller trees that were able to be pushed over with the tractor. We would push a number of trees over, then carry them to a pile. It took a while before we had enough land cleared to even make a pile.
You can start to see the small trail we made, to get up to where we started the clearing. In the first pic below, you can see the tractor through the trees, and see the clearing starting to open up. I took the second pic just by turning to the right about 45 degrees or so with the camera.
The grapple makes fast work of tree and brush material handling.
It was mostly all softwoods, but for the hardwoods, I cut them into sections and piled them to be processed into firewood later on.
This is a pretty good series of photos showing how much of the work was done. We would knock the tree over with the grapple and once it was almost down, and only held up by the remaining roots, we'd back up, then insert the lower part of the grapple under the uprooted stump, and lift and drive forward at the same time. This would free the stump/tree from the ground, then cut it in half or thirds if need be, and take it away.
Here comes my grandfather through the woods, bringing us each a sandwich and a couple cold beers :thumbsup: (He turned 94 TODAY! God bless that guy!)
It's starting to open up a bit now. That pile is going to be fun to burn this winter.
My dad really started to have some fun when I gave him my Bose noise cancelling headphones and put on some Dave Matthews for him. He was really having a good time.