Clearing brush in orchards-- berta flail or brush mower?

[leonz]

jeepcoma-- this is exactly the info I was looking for.

Occasionally hitting some rock or concrete is pretty likely. After socialism ended (actually, maybe better to say, after the Communist party gave up power in '89), many former state run enterprises went bankrupt, I understand from neighbors that you pretty much went and took what you could from the defunct orchard, factory, whatever. So when I was walking that orchard, I came across bits of the concrete tiles that had lined the drainage ditches randomly around from when neighbors must have been pulling them out to use for projects around their houses.

It may that at the rate of 1 acre a day, I could just get it done mostly myself, taking one day or two days a week depending on the other things I need to do that week. If, as my wife is thinking, we were to get rentals worked out by autumn, then the important thing is that I have enough cleared in the first year to get enough subsidies to pay the state and private owners the rental for land, and pay the village the tax on the land. My goats can even be working ahead of me, to eat what they can and make it easier to see obstacles I might hit.

I suppose you have the Berta flail? How much do replacement flails cost? (I know that's US prices, but if I multiply by about 25% I'll get appx. EU prices). Can they be sharpened to extend their life, or is it just when it wears out you need to put on a new one?

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Hello Freedom lives,

The flail mower knives can be sharpened easily using a low sped wet well grinder.

Micromark in the USA currently has a $99.00 US dollar wet well grinder for sale and it is easy to use.
I believe that they ship internationally also.

Micro-Mark - The Small Tools Specialists


The reason you want to use a low speed wet well grinder it to prevent the temper in the
steel to be destroyed by the heat of a high speed bench grinder.

The side slicer knives have two cutting edges allowing you to flip the knives over to expose
a new sharp edge to use for mowing.

If you could see about having the area mowed with a brush hog the first time would save you time
and grief as you will know where the junk if there is any dumped in the orchard.

Ideally a tractor with a landscape rake would work well as it would pull all the junk out and then
you can get rid of any thing that can go to the scrap yard for recycling and money back.

 

[taygetos]

@freedomlives

It would be faster and easier on the mower to take the saplings down with a chainsaw and remove them from the field. Rocks and concrete you can pick up with a wheelbarrow. Small rocks damage the flails a bit, but bigger ones could damage the rotor if you run on them with great speed. I've removed anything bigger than 4-5 cm in diameter from my fields. Uneven terrain could be a problem depending on the type of uneveness. I had one of my fields tilled by a 4 wheeled tractor, and the guy did the job a few days after some rain had fallen and the heavy tractor compressed the ground. When I mowed after a couple of months the field was full of tracks. In this case the flails scalp the ground boging the engine down and you have to press on the handlebars all the time which is tiresome.
The Berta manual states that you cannot replace just one flail due to balancing issues. You should replace either the whole row of the damaged flail or the two diametrically opposite pairs of flails. I don't know if sharpening is acceptable, but I think damage from rocks brings the flails in a state that sharpening doesn't make much sense. If I remember correctly a set of flails is about 50 euros.
There is a big difference between just maintaning the field and getting it cleared for the first time. Trees slow you down too if they are not planted in lines because you have to change direction often and you overlap a lot. But 1 acre per day is manageable.

 

[CodeMonkey]

This is what my neighbor is using:

To get this result:

Just a few days ago, that was a tangle of brush and fallen maple/alder up to 4 or five inches thick at the base. They cut down the thicker trees first.