Best way to clear unwanted trees from pasture

[My Gym]

If you can leave stumps in the ground. If covering the fields with mulch is ok. If your trees are not large. If you have can operate a skid steer. The is the fastest and easiest way to clear your field.

Operating Techniques: Skid-Steer Forestry Mulcher - Tech Tips - Diamond Mowers - YouTube

Note: stump grinders are for urban lawns. The stump is still there and can damage cultivating equipment. It does remove the stump about 3-8" to cover with sod for a lawn. They are slow and leave a lot of debris. It gets that ugly stump out of sight for the perfect landscaping.

 

[Rmart30]

Eastern Red Cedar will burn green. I piled them and burned them.
This is actually a 2 part problem. The first is cutting or removing the trees. The second is disposal of the trees.
The right decision for you depends upon you importance of time, money, speed, and final use of the land. Leaving stumps in the ground is the easiest and fastest. This will limit your use of the land until the stumps rot. The trees will have to be piled if you burn, mulch or ship out. The only option of piling is a large mulching head, but will cover the fields in a heavy layer of mulch. This will ****** grass growth. Burning the trees will require the trees to dry for about a year. Are there burning restrictions in your area? Is there a market for mulch in our area? Is there a demand for free firewood in your area? Are the trees desirable for relocating by a nursery?

Any method that removes stumps, will be expensive, labor intensive, and require leveling work after. My neighbor has an excavating company.

I have seen the results of excavator, bulldozer, skidsteer with mulching head/saw, tree puller, chainsaw,and turbosaw. They have different costs with good and bad points.

The 2 part problem is why I chose to have mine mulched. I had 400+ pines taken out. Probably more than that. I couldnt burn them and I had no good place for that huge of a pile to sit and rot. At the end of 8 hours of their work I could drive on that area and it had a good 6-12" layer of mulch to help build up my soil for future lawn.

 

[Gary Fowler]

I would go with the excavator or commercial grade of backhoe (both with hydraulic thumb). Dig out the trees, then by using the thumb, pick up the tree and shake the dirt of the root and stack the tree to the side. Dig up a few then use the FEL to push the dirt back in the stump holes to level things out.
I did this at my place using my little B26 and took down some fairly large trees, 16+" in diameter x 30-40 feet tall. It takes a while to take out a tree that size with a small hoe. Small 6-8"x20' trees would usually just take one scoop with the hoe on one side to cut the roots, then push it over to the opposite side. At my place, most of the strong roots seemed to grow on the north side for some reason so I would cut the roots on the south side then push them over since the larger roots didn't do much for holding when in compression but held a lot if you tried to pull against them.
It isn't a fast process but it is permanent and grass will cover the damage pretty fast.

Bushhogging works well for anything 4" and below and any good bush hog will chew them up easily. Basically anything your tractors FEL can push over can be cut with a bush hog, just dont try to back up thru the slash, you just might run a stick thru something important on your tractor.

 

[Ed27]

You guys are awesome! I really appreciate your feedback. A bit more info about the land. The pasture has hundreds of trees to be cleared, but the pasture is not filled solid with trees. I will first rotary cut the grass areas, then attack the trees. When I am done, the pasture will mainly be used for grazing horses, and growing and mowing hay. I will cut the trees to ground level and not remove the stumps. Based on your feedback, I think I am going to do the following:

1. Mow the grass and small saplings with a Land Pride RCR2672 rotary cutter. RCR266 & RCR2672 Series Rotary Cutters | Land Pride
2. Cut down trees to slightly below ground level with a TurboSaw LT3200. Tractor Mounted Tree Saw
3. Paint fresh cut stumps with triclopyr herbicide.
4. Pick up tree with Land Pride SGC1572 grapple. SGC15 Series Claw Grapples | Land Pride
5. Put the trees through the Woodland Mills WC88 PTO Wood Chipper. It will take up to 8" diameter wood. WC88 8″ PTO Wood Chipper, Wood Chipper | Woodland Mills USA
6. Load the wood chips in a trailer and haul them off.

It will sure take longer than having a company with a monster forestry mulcher to do it for me, but at the end I will own a grapple, tree saw, and wood chipper. These will be very useful later when I cut some trails in the woods. I like the idea that the land will not be disturbed or covered with a boatload of mulched Bradford pear trees. Thumbs up? Thumbs down?

Thanks again,
Ed

 

[searcyfarms]

no question, pay someone with a large excavator, grade/reseed, you will love the results - everything else is a waste of time/money

 

[edgarrian]

I suggest renting an excavator. Pushing trees over, cut limbs off, cut sections of logs and stack them, cut stump off, dig hole, burn branches and stumps in hole, cover hole. Done

 

[My Gym]

You guys are awesome! I really appreciate your feedback. A bit more info about the land. The pasture has hundreds of trees to be cleared, but the pasture is not filled solid with trees. I will first rotary cut the grass areas, then attack the trees. When I am done, the pasture will mainly be used for grazing horses, and growing and mowing hay. I will cut the trees to ground level and not remove the stumps. Based on your feedback, I think I am going to do the following:

1. Mow the grass and small saplings with a Land Pride RCR2672 rotary cutter. RCR266 & RCR2672 Series Rotary Cutters | Land Pride
2. Cut down trees to slightly below ground level with a TurboSaw LT3200. Tractor Mounted Tree Saw
3. Paint fresh cut stumps with triclopyr herbicide.
4. Pick up tree with Land Pride SGC1572 grapple. SGC15 Series Claw Grapples | Land Pride
5. Put the trees through the Woodland Mills WC88 PTO Wood Chipper. It will take up to 8" diameter wood. WC88 8″ PTO Wood Chipper, Wood Chipper | Woodland Mills USA
6. Load the wood chips in a trailer and haul them off.

It will sure take longer than having a company with a monster forestry mulcher to do it for me, but at the end I will own a grapple, tree saw, and wood chipper. These will be very useful later when I cut some trails in the woods. I like the idea that the land will not be disturbed or covered with a boatload of mulched Bradford pear trees. Thumbs up? Thumbs down?

Thanks again,
Ed

I would love to hear further discussion about the treating/painting of the stumps. Eastern Red Cedar dies if you cut it below the bottom branches. The fields that I have worked on have been grazed and hayed. This has controlled regrowth without chemicals. The few trees that I have treated the stumps, I have used Tordon.

There are prefered times of year to do this work. If you remove trees in the winter/spring before the trees leaf out, the trees are about 1/4 to 1/3 lighter. If you are feeding a chipper manually, cool weather helps. Mowing fields and cutting of the trees stops growth. Do it first. Letting the downed trees dry out for a period of time before grappling and chipping will make them lighter and easier to move.

 

[radios1]

using a stump grinder leaves the to be rotting stump parts in place which will eventually rot away, leaving a depression in the soil which has to be constantly filled with new soil, not good!.. BTDT.. cut stumps can be killed and disintegrated in about a week by drilling a few holes in the top, and pouring some pool shock(strong chlorine) in them.. cover that with a tarp to keep the rain from getting in there..

 

[Redlands Okie]

Considering this is a owning, operating thread it seems you have a good plan for your needs. Not sure you need the stump killer for the cedars.

 

[DJ54]

Another option to the herbicide, and you may laugh, but, get 5-6 goats, to pasture along with the horses. They'll pretty well clean up any unwanted broad leaf vegetation the horses will not eat anyway. I got 2, about 15 years ago to pasture with my horses, and clean up a section of pasture that had a lot of poison ivy, black berry brier's, honeysuckle, and multi-flora rose. Plus some trees stumps that shot up water sprouts in the new fence line. They love that stuff..!! The great thing is, they will browse on it all winter. Great companion animals for "most" horses. I had a Tennessee Walker mare that wasn't too fond of them getting in her space. But the others got along fine with them. Plus, if you hay the horse won't eat. And, depending on the fence you have, or will use, if they can get their nose under it, they will keep the fence line clear.

The Amish in this area that bought old run down, overgrown farms, would bring in herds of 25-30 goats, and turn them loose. Within a couple of years, they had it pretty well eaten down, and made a lot of useful pasture, for cattle, and their horses.