The state I call hoe is on fire. A lot of it is due to uncleared brush. It leads me to ask how do you take care of you brush and with what regularity?
Pretty darn neat, yeah I said neat.
Before...
During...
And now.
All taken from the same spot.
How did you build this? How big of trees and brush will it cut before sheering a pin?
Do you use and herbicides as part of your clearing?
I use it on poison oak and on the cut stumps of trees and really large brush (4"+) to keep them from re sprouting. I try to avoid chemicals but the PO is insane and I'm very allergic to it.
It looks like I'll need to mow the grassy cleared areas one more "last" time. This will be the third "last" time, and about three times as often as normal. We had 100 inches of rain this winter. But the well's full and the dry farm tomatoes in the garden are very happy.
That's what I've been doing. Have a grapple coming to clear up the edges.I start with my brush hog on on the back of the tractor. But I can never get it close to the edges as I want because of overhanging branches or the bank of a stream. If you don't keep pushing back, your field eventually gets smaller and smaller -- to coin a phrase, rush never sleeps. We call people with that issue a middle-of-the-field farmer. So once I get everything mowed, I run around the edges with Round Up. I have a 15 gallon sprayer on the back of an ATV and it works great. Only problem is that you end up with a lot of dead shrubs and stuff that now consists of dead sticks and twigs. I'd like to walk around the edges with my blade trimmer -- like a string trimmer but with a tough steel blade -- but its just too much work at this point. So good enough is good enough.
I'm wondering how he's got his blades set up tho, I've got a 5 foot bushhog that I wouldn't mind converting over to something like that or like a Brown tree cutter/bushhog.Looks like it's got a slip clutch (with no safety shield). I wonder how well it works and how much power it needs. It looks like it could throw objects quite a ways. Commercial models like the Baumalight CP560 have side shields that extend farther forwards. (they also have four blades and claim to cut up to 4").
I'd really like a forestry mulcher on the front of a track loader but that's kind of expensive. Even a mulcher for the back of my tractor would be expensive and my tractor can drive only the smallest ones that would choke on our large brush.
We can't burn here and brush left in piles just sits there for years. I'm using chain saws and 8" pto chipper for the larger brush. Stihl FS240 brush cutter and a rotary cutter on the tractor for smaller brush. it's slow but I've cleared a good fire safety buffer around the house.