New to forum - need land clearing advice

[justinl]

have you looked into having it mulched down?

 

[Piston]

I would first figure in the cost of a grapple, no matter what you do. It will save you so much time and effort with cleaning up you won't know how you got along without it. For the job you are doing, you may as well take your bucket off, put it away somewhere, and throw a grapple on, you won't need the bucket until all the trees/brush are cleaned up.
You'll be amazed at how much work you can do with a grapple. I've done some land clearing (granted no where near how much you are looking at) and my grapple has saved me an unbelievable amount of time and effort. Anyone who has one will agree, it would be money well spent (or rather, BEST spent)

 

[big e]

You could put a post on craigslist to see if someone on your side of Dallas would do the work in exchange for some hunting rights. Do you have hogs? Or you could lease the property for a year or two and use that $ to buy equipment or labor.

BTW, either way I'd try to burn first... and only burn a third or hal of each "section" per year so wildlife has a place to live while the burn re-grows.

 

[crowbar032]

Instead of a dozer, I'd recommend a track loader for clearing. Theyre usually cheaper than a dozer and you'll not push all of your topsoil away plus you can easily pop trees/stumps out and carry them away. Something like a 955L cat, 175 IH, etc. would be a good size. The teeth on the bucket works great as a root rake and in the areas your describing, you could rake most of the bushes and trees into piles and burn or dig holes and bury.
I'm currently running a 955H cat clearing mature hardwood forest for pasture and it works great. I have a dozer, havent started it in months (guess I need to at least start it). I do have a 55 hp john deere 4wd with FEL, but I dont like beating on it when I have the old caterpillar to knock trees down with and clear the ground.

Good luck...........

With bigger trees, I agree with the track loader. I have a 953 Cat, and it's an absolute beast on 6 inch trees and up. You can get the bucket up high, which pops the root ball up where you can get to it. However on trees smaller than that, either it's not very good or I'm not very good at running it. The trees just bend over and won't pop out the root ball. I end up digging a big hole. It's hard to get the ground graded level as the bucket doesn't tip side to side. I had other reasons for wanting a loader, but if I went the dozer route I would only consider a dozer with a 6 way blade. You'd be in the same boat with a straight blade dozer.

I'm an accountant with an unfortunate hobby farm addiction. I'm not a professional equipment operator so salt well before digesting, it's just my $.02.

 

[TCJatko]

Were I doing it I'd bite the bullet and have it mulched. It'll get done in a few days and you can move on.

 

[LazySusanFarms]

I bought a turbo saw for the 3 point. It has worked well and will handle a large tree. A grapple will be mandatory no matter what you do.

 

[Piston]

I bought a turbo saw for the 3 point. It has worked well and will handle a large tree. A grapple will be mandatory no matter what you do.

I was just looking at the turbo saw website yesterday and it looks pretty impressive.
Does it work as well as they advertise it?

 

[Gale Hawkins]

I dont want to steer you away from new equipment, but if it were mine, I'd make use of the equipment you already have.

IF you have a heavy-duty bushhog, it should easily handle 3" and smaller trees/sapplings. Go around the ones that are too big. Go back and chainsaw the off flush with the ground . The just keep up with the bushhogging and you'll be all set.

2x.

Put in 100 hours with your posted equipment and get back with us on the plan of attack that evolved during 100 hour of seat time. I promise you are going to be surprised at what you can do with what you have in hand today.

Locally the soil is mainly clay based with some sand. In the spring when the surface is no longer muddy but the soil is very heavy we can take over really tall trees if the root wad is small just by using the FEL all the way up or at least quite high. This is done in the lowest gear at about 800 to BH so we have a lot of weight on the non blasted rear drive tires. It is a 2WD unit.

Again take the thought to try with the equipment that you have now and run with it.

 

[ShearHeadMS]

what you could do is rent a D6M and find someone with a chopper, the chopper can take most of the trees down, iv chopped for about 60 an acre. or just get a shear dozer out there and shear all of it, you can get this done for about 250 an acre for just the shearing, if anyone tries to charge more tell them to walk, most shear guys like me will work with the land owner and help in anyway possible. mulching sounds like a great idea and if you can get someone with a machine big enough to do it go for it!

 

[john25mm]

I am having fun doing the same thing with Crab apple, locust and cherry trees up to that size. I have a Kubota L5450 with a FEL and my technique is to raise the bucket up about as high as it will go and center punch the tree with it. I slowly put the edge of the bucket on the tree and then push in low gear straight forward. When it tilts over the root ball usually pops about halfway out and at that point I back up and lower the bucket down to just above the ground and hook onto the root ball and push it out. I have found this technique will leave most of the dirt in the ground. I then get the fun of pushing the trees into a pile to be either chopped up into firewood or a big burn pile. A set of forks would make moving them around a lot easier but that is down the road. You can clear a fair amount quickly this way.
Of course your mileage may vary.