Land Clearing and Pasture Project

[Sniggle]

I purchased 6 acres in January 2008 to add to my 3 acre lot for the purpose of adding some pasture land for my wife's horses. In the bargain I also got 3 acres I can bow hunt on and the justification to buy a tractor.

Last February I paid a local contractor $8500 to clear the pasture area (leaving some mature hardwood trees) and move approx. 400 cubic yards of rock and clay (from construction of development) into a dry farm pond at the back of the property. ( Unfortunately I do not have pictures of clearing, as my computer hard drive crash with no survivors last month).

I then spent over 50 hours with a landscape rake, box blade and FEL clearing roots, removing rocks, spreading the burn pile remenants out, levelling the pasture, prepping for seeding, and then raking in the pasture seed in (landscape rake turned backwards). I finished that in April 2008 and the pasture came to life last summer.

Tommorrow I will post some pictures of what it looks like now, and showing my slow but steady progress on fencing it (Ramm Fence). I need to get it fenced by April, so the horses can move into it once the grass get ankle high.

 

[Sniggle]

I have a few pictures of how it looks now:

 

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So far I have planted 100 5 inch posts and 25 8 inch posts and used 55 bags of concrete (lots of rock making post holes difficult in spots). I have another 6 posts to secure with concrete, and then I will start to build out the corners (horizontal braces, diagonal (sp) braces set in concrete), and then,finally, I will be able to start to string the fence.

After my bota and I finish this job, I have promised her a complete fluid change (600 hour service).

I will post a few more once I get the corners built and then, hopefully, as I finish this job.

 

[natem]

Did they dig the stumps out too????? Seems like a good price even if they did not.

 

[Sniggle]

The guy who did it was able to pop almost all the stumps out of the ground while clearing. It is amazing to watch a tracked loader/dozer pushing down full size tree, and then picking them up root ball and all to move them to the burn pile. The only stumps left where a few cedar stumps where the tree snapped off as he tried to pop the root ball.

I do think I got a real fair price. He spent approx. 50 hours of dozer work, 16 hours of dump truck work (with operator to move debris pile), and then another 5 hours or so burning the piles.

He did live only 1 mile from my house, so that gave him incentive to give me a good price. He is also a one man operation, so little overhead.

 

[Sniggle]

I finished my fence install last weekend, and so my 1 year project to convert 3 acres of brush and trees into a horse pasture is complete.

As the pictures show, I used Ramm fence with a 5.25 inch top rail and 4 coated wires below. The project used 1300 feet of 5.25 inch rail, 5200 feet of coated wire, 121 4-5 inch treated posts, 22 7-8 inch treated posts and 80 80-lb bags of concrete (each corner has 640 lbs of concrete, and about 15 posts are set in concrete because rocks prevented adequate hole depth).

Stringing the fence took about 28 hours, which includes 14 hours of the neighbor's 16-year old son's time at $8/hour (much better option than having the wife help

It may not be a perfect installation, but it should be more than adequate for our horses.

 

[CTW]

Nice looking fence, do you plan on painting your new post with that black beauty paint to match the other wood fence? Sure is a nice looking contrast against that dark green grass. Enjoy!