Cleaning Up Substantial Yard Debris

[PlasterProspector]

Hey folks, I moved onto about 80 acres and the first five of it have been used as a junkyard for all kinds of miscellaneous debris and junk. I've got tires, washing machines, broken bottles, rotted mattresses, three sets of crutches (?), rotted old furniture with nails sticking out and so much more. It's been accumulated by poor stewards over the last thirty years and most of it is so small I've only been able to use my tractor as a glorified wheelbarrow while I hand load the FEL. I've already done two 30yd dumpsters for just the easy stuff. Now that the leaves are off the trees I can see that it's so much worse than I imagined. It's a million tiny pieces of junk seemingly everywhere in the brush. I've already had two punctures in the last few months.

Anyone have any experience cleaning up this sort of thing before? I bought a metal detector and a magnetic sweep but it feels like I'm picking needles off a pine tree. Would a skeleton bucket be useful or maybe some other attachment? I looked into hanging magnets and magnetizing my bucket but my terrain is so uneven.

 

[ruffdog]

Humans can be such dirty creatures sometimes. Good for you for taking the time and effort to clean up after others. It looks like a rock grapple might help with the big stuff and hanging magnets under the tractor to pick up nails would work? Good luck!

A lifting magnet might be your best bet if the items are bigger.

 

[Hay Dude]

Thanks and blessings for what you are doing.

 

[jeff9366]

How about a set of clamp on, 13-spear ULTRAFORKS?

The round spears allow some dirt to fall through.

Multi-Spear Ultra Fork

tractor round hay bale spear picks up to 2,000 lbs.

bucketsolutions.com

 

[Diggin It]

What are your resources and capabilities? Can you rent and run a dozer? Excavator? Or hire someone with them?

Push it all into a pile and load it into a dump truck.

Where to haul it might be another issue. Will local dumps take it?

 

[PlasterProspector]

Humans can be such dirty creatures sometimes. Good for you for taking the time and effort to clean up after others. It looks like a rock grapple might help with the big stuff and hanging magnets under the tractor to pick up nails would work? Good luck!

A lifting magnet might be your best bet if the items are bigger.

I've had a lot of success hammering logging tongs into big stuff and dragging it out. Really underrated tool. Often times you can open it, slam one side into an object and then when the chain comes tight it gets a fantastic grip with the other side. I've got a neighbor who likes to rip up my fields on his snowmobile and cut paths through my trees so I'm going to use em to drag some logs over to the property line.

How about a set of clamp on, 13-spear ULTRAFORKS?

The round spears allow some dirt to fall through.

Multi-Spear Ultra Fork

tractor round hay bale spear picks up to 2,000 lbs.

bucketsolutions.com

I like these. It could certainly help get most of the stuff and then I could just flag each spot and rake it every mud season to work the tiny stuff into the soil.

A large part of my concern is it feels like every time I clean something big that I've just left small stuff behind that now I won't be able to find.

 

[PlasterProspector]

What are your resources and capabilities? Can you rent and run a dozer? Excavator? Or hire someone with them?

Push it all into a pile and load it into a dump truck.

Where to haul it might be another issue. Will local dumps take it?

I'm pretty well restricted to what I've got for now. The dump gets shy about renting out the big dumpsters this time of year so I'm just going to try to centralize the debris over the course of the winter. That's what I did over the last few months and it filled two 30yd dumpsters.

 

[DB Pilot]

I have a similar situation, not nearly as bad as yours, but This year I found a sink and railroad ties plus lots of plastic, oh I forgot a piece of corrugated sheet metal under some leaves. Not to mention the tree to tree wire fencing I almost have cleaned up. Bought the (75 acres) property in 2001.
I think you are doing the cleanup just as I have with the tractor bucket. I have a skeleton bucket but it is of little use so I can't recommend that. The problem is that damp soil will not sift well, so when you try to shake it, I start worrying about the hydraulics. The dump trailer has been invaluable hauling to the landfill.
I guess it is easy to create a mess but hard and very costly to clean it up. I found a refrigerator, stove, 5 cast iron sinks, farm disc, plow, record player, roofing shingles, 62 tires, recliner (with rotten foam rubber), etc. getting ready to pick it up, each time I found myself asking ***WHY***. Finally I never found a easy method of cleaning up the land but it is very rewarding when an area gets cleaned.

 

[PlasterProspector]

I guess it is easy to create a mess but hard and very costly to clean it up. I found a refrigerator, stove, 5 cast iron sinks, farm disc, plow, record player, roofing shingles, 62 tires, recliner (with rotten foam rubber), etc. getting ready to pick it up, each time I found myself asking ***WHY***.

I figured out the why part recently. I've got a pile of old tires out there and I'll be honest, when I changed my car tires recently I did look sideways at that pile and think, eh, what's a few more. I snapped myself out of it and did the right thing though. Trouble is, it's a snowball.

 

[groundcover]

This would be just the ticket, don't have the flat tire issues either.

 

[EddieWalker]

One of the reasons I was able to get such a good price for my land was that it had become the local junk yard. Piles of stuff all over the place. Most of it I could scoop up with my loader bucket and burn in my burn pole. But stuff like broken glass was always left behind. After getting everything that I could with my bucket, I dug a huge hole next to the area of "stuff" and then scraped off the top several inches of soil and put it in the hole, 8 feet down. Then I filled up the hole, compacted it, disked the soil and planted Bermuda seed. Those areas became my best areas of grass!!!

 

[4570Man]

A tracked skid steer and grapple or mini x with thumb would be your best bet for loading that.

 

[Tomtint]

Uggggg that's a lot of work. I would suggest a MiniX with a thumb and a tractor with a grapple bucket. Separate the metal into one pile to sell or give away for scrap, another pile for trash and another pile for things that can be burned. Maybe try to do a little bit at a time when time is available. ..Hopefully the entire property wasn't used as a dump.

 

[old and tired]

I'm with Eddie, recycle or scrape what you can, dig a hole to burn and bury what you can not.

I looked at a nice piece of property on a river, nice access to the river. Only problem, was 10,000 tires lining the hill side. I really did think hard about that property. I should have counter offered, I'll buy the place -$2 per tire.... I think I could have made money!!!!

 

[nikerret]

Get the big stuff out. When the weather is right, burn the pasture. This will remove the small combustible stuff, by fire, and will expose all the other crap. Then, choose the best tool, for what you see.

Good on you, for cleaning it up.

 

[two_bit_score]

Buy a used or rent: Crawler Loaders | John Deere US

 

[ruffdog]

Start the video at 9 min:

 

[Have tractor did travel]

I had the same challenge. 100 years of the same family with trash heaps hither, thither, and yon. Masonry products went to the pit silo. Wood products went to the burn pile. 243 tires to the county dump. Everything else went into trash bags, 5 gallon buckets, etc., and got hauled to a free for use, dumpster. I found no way other than loading by hand. Fill the front end loader or throw it into the pickup bed. I tried to man handle junk only one time on the farm. Of course, if it went to the dumpster, I hand to hand unload it. I also used a dump trailer when I had a big mess I was attacking - like the roof to the milk processing building (rotten wood and shingles).
I did get one of those walk behind magnets that roofers use to get nails out of the lawn when they have ripped off an old roof.

 

[PlasterProspector]

Get the big stuff out. When the weather is right, burn the pasture. This will remove the small combustible stuff, by fire, and will expose all the other crap. Then, choose the best tool, for what you see.

Good on you, for cleaning it up.

The issue is that everybody threw the stuff into the woods and bushes so I have to take a chainsaw and a hedge trimmer to even find the stuff, to hand load it, to brush hog it. The pastures are pretty clear. Nobody bothered to use the massive fields to throw stuff away so it's all in bramble and tall grass in the front five near the house.

 

[Have tractor did travel]

Plaster - I forgot about this tool. I used this just this last week to burn the underbrush along the fence line along one of the public roads making up our farm boundary. It did not burn the brush. Once burned, I could see the bottles, shoes, etc. that had been thrown there over the years. I think the brush might have burned if I held the flame to it long enough. I also think if you used a weed trimmer (remove the string and put on the circular saw), if you cut the brush just above the debris, and let it lay for 6 months, it then would burn handily. As it was, the branches were too far away from each other to get a good burn going. I used about a gallon of propane an hour, working the way I described. The mfg. says with my unit (a six footer), to get a 100 lb. propane tank. I used 40 lbs, and it will work fine for my purposes which are primarily maintenance of the fence, not cleaning up the fence line.

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