Clear 60 Acres For Farm land

[tonyoz]

The best way of getting stumps out of the ground is to leave the tree on it, rip around it then push the whole tree over then cut any good timber off it. A 20 excavator with a ripper is all you would need, it could be done with a 12 tonner with a good operator. For any nay sayers out there I used to use this method for clearing land for a living and never dented or scratched the machine or dropped a tree in a direction it wasn't supposed to go. The biggest tree I ever pushed like this was a huge pine, cut 80 ton of firewood out of it and the stump weighed 20 ton after it had dried. Other than that a good sized stumpgrinder is the go.

 

[Gary Fowler]

hire it out.. cheaper than buying specialized land clearing equipment.

The reason I suggested buying a used excavator is that he could likely recoup all of his money and maybe make some if he found a really good deal to start with. It doesn't take much to have $1000 per acre in rental or hire for equipment when it is $100 per hour or more. $60K will buy a rather large used excavator in very good shape whereas if you hired or rented, all you would have to show for it is cleared land and no equipment inventory.

 

[Gary Fowler]

Watch how the dozer work goes or you could end up with more dirt than tree. We hired a dozer to clear a new fence line (fence was not on actual surveyed property line by up to 50 feet on one end) that was 1/4 mile triangle with 50 feet at the long end to a point at the other end. The dozer pushed up some very large trees with large root ball and then shoved them out into the existing pasture about 60 feet. It had so much dirt, rock fence debris, that it wouldn't even burn. We waited about 2 years for it to dry, then tried to roll out the trees from the dirt but quickly decided that it was not feasible with our equipment. We then hired a new guy with a D6 to roll the piles out to clear out the dirt and fence debris. We then burned it and the same guy then spread the ashes and dirt out while separating out the fence wire and metal post. It was about 6 hours work total added to the 10 hours of clearing time. It was much cheaper than running a branch thru a radiator on the tractors or ruining a tire or two on the old wire and fence post. There really isn't any excavators for hire here in the area now that the one contractor sold his trackhoe.
With your own excavator, you can dig up the trees, cutting the root ball down to minimal and even knock off a lot of the dirt, stack them neatly also if you have a large excavator with a thumb thus minimizing the dirt content. You cant afford to take the time to do this when renting and surely don't want to pay $100 an hour for contractor to do it.

 

[tonyoz]

Yeh Gary, clearing trees with a dozer seems to be a dying art. I know old blokes who could push timber all day without getting dirt in the heap but gees they are getting hard to find. I worked on a job a couple of years ago and a young bloke was on a brand new D8 clearing a site, told him how to do the job but what do I know. He cleared the site alright along with all the topsoil, the timber had to be ground threw a hog, took that contractor a week to sort the mess out as an extra to the contract.

 

[PapaPerk]

I gotta ask why you wanna clear 60 acres of large trees... You are in for a whole lotta work! Not to mention dollars!

As others have said leave the larger woods and clean up the scrub land. All farms need a good woods. Especially one you plan to live on! Just my opinion...

 

[rmorey]

Loggers in our area will work for 50/50 or 60/40 and do all the work. Maybe give one a call and get an idea what they could do.

 

[AGRIMAN]

There's a lot of land being cleared and put back into production around here. Most are clear cutting then using excavators (50lbs rangle) to pull the stumps and windrow. Then a few passes with an Austrian root rake to gather up the left overs, pile and burn.

My neighbor just cleared about 60 acres for a new pivot. They moved in to stump it with 5 excavators , 2 D7 dozers and a large wheel loader. It took them about a week and it was piled.

 

[Stick895]

I sold the timber on mine and I'll clean up whatever mess is left.

 

[Gary Fowler]

Around here recently they clear cut about 200 acres right down the road from me. Left one heck of a mess with stumps about 6-16" high depending on the elevation of the land. Brush everywhere, stumps everywhere, small saplings everywhere and no way to get into clear up any thing without risk of damage to equipment. It would take literally months with an excavator to dig out all those large pine tree stumps and decades for the stumps to rot. I don't know what the owner plans to do with it now, likely thinks he can now sell it for $7K per acre. I wouldn't let him give me $7K per acre and take it off his hands as it would cost more than that to clean it up for any kind of use other than reforestation.

 

[TomSeller]

Around here recently they clear cut about 200 acres right down the road from me. Left one heck of a mess .

Land owners inexperienced in ruthless timber practices can be in for one heck of a surprise. The logging company has already sold the timber by the time the land owner wakes up and smells the coffee. They are stuck with a contract that allows the logging company to do exactly what they did.