Will you do the clearing yourself? 70 acres is a lotta stumps! Do you plan to burn them, or find someplace to use them for fill?
Yeah I will do my own clearing. I accidentally got into the land clearing business by accident after retirement. It's not bad, just mind numbing as you thrash inside an excavator all day, or making long pushes with the bulldozers. I just try to stay sane by making an imaginary line and seeing if I can make it to that point in an hour, a day, or a week or something. I average about 2 acres per day, but here...probably 2-1/2 to 3 acres per day, just because its got gentle slopes, and the bedrock is slate, not craggy ledge where the roots really get worked into.
I am not sure what I will do with the stumps yet. Our farm is quickly becoming a fairgrounds for an event in the summer so looks are starting to be important. I have no issue with pushing the stumps to the outside borders, but it is a LONG push when you get in the middle of a 30 acre field. I like the idea of burning them (and in Maine you still can), but then do I want smoke drifting around for a year or so?
There is a wet spot in the middle where the watersheds divide from left to right, then rises from front to back, so maybe I will just make a windrow so I can push straight down both hills towards the center, form a ditch with an excavator just before each side of the windrow, and get the water to drain into their respective watersheds.
You cannot see it well in the video, but to the far left we want to put in a pond, so getting water to it on this hill will be a priority (no springs that I know of), then maybe have some RV parking stuffed into the woods near the pond for that summer event.
