Live in the woods, want a little more grass

[Aviatordave]

Hey folks,

I’m grappling with a question of how to part with some of my hard earned money. (Well, ok, how to part with it is easy, I know . . .) What, specifically, should I spend it on? We live on 10 heavily wooded acres. Trees right up close to the house on all sides. I’m sure the previous owner loved it. We like the woods but I’d like to clear away the trees that are close to the house and selectively clear some further away from the house for another acre or so to have a nice gladed lawn. Currently we’re surrounded with dead and down stuff that is all slowly rotting away amongst the thick carpet of dead leaves. I have a small Kubota subcompact with a FEL rated at about 400lbs and I swear that thing has such a narrow/tall profile that sometimes having a front tire drop into a pothole brings the rear tire off the ground if I have any weight in the bucket at all. I’m in constant fear that it’s going to roll over on me and kill me. It’s got a ROPS but part of me feels like wearing the seatbelt on that little thing is a liability. A question for the lawyers, I suppose.
Anyway, taking it onto uneven ground just won’t do. Besides, it’s barely big enough to move a full bucket of wet dirt. It’s future is limited.

I want to upgrade to something that will handle the uneven, rolling terrain around the house, be strong enough to lift, say, large sections of tree trunk (maybe 2’ in diameter, 10ish feet long, black oak) with no problem. Some of the ground can get muddy.

I vacillate between a larger skid steer with tracks and a bucket with a grapple or a general farm type tractor. It seems to me that a skid steer has a ton more options for what you can mount on it. I plan on felling trees with a chainsaw and cutting the trunks into manageable pieces for whatever equipment I have. Being able to deal with stumps would be nice as well.

What should I get? What have you all had good land clearing experiences with?

-Dave

 

[rademamj1]

Land clearing just an acre or even two acres around your house is not a bad idea, and everyone will agree that nice green landscaped lawns look good, increase security and adds value. I would not purchase a high cost skid steer for just clearing a couple of acres. I would recommend you consider hiring a dedicated land clearing contractor, who uses a tracked skid steer and mulching head. He can do the job in 2 days or less...and all the stumps are included in his work. You can also select certain trees to keep and mark them, so the clearing contractor avoids them.

Or you can buy a chainsaw, 40hp tractor, PTO chipper and stump grinder and do the same work in about 2 months work. That's what I have done, and have cleared close to 11 acres in two years...weather permitting of course. In fact this year I need a vacation, so I am parking my tractor and letting the land clearing contractor do some work. For 3 days work, at $1500 per day, his skid steer can clear probably 4 acres for me.

Just be advised, the land clearing contractors do leave a mulching mess behind on the ground, and no lawn grass will grow unless it's picked up

 

[Frankenkubota]

My land is all mature pines but it has a lower canopy. I call them weedy trees. Between 1-6 in dia. Virtually in passable in the summer. I paid for a prescribed burn last year. Now i have a bunch of standing dead weedy trees! Kind of wasted my $ but the wildlife benefits

I cleared about 4 acres by hand. Chain saw, make huge piles, drag them off and burn. At least 100 piles, maybe many more? Pop the squid root balls out with ratchet rake. Took at least 6 months. Then I hired a guy with a skid steer and forestry grinder machine. He did the remaining 2 acres in 12 hours for $2400? Plus, it was fun to watch. My guy did leave a few 6-12 inch posts sticking up where there were rocks.

My guys machine had hammers which just destroyed the trees. The first guy that came had a machine that had cutter blades. He broke 2 blades in the first 45 minutes and left!

I'm leaving most the mulch down but where it was a problem, I made a pile and burned it.

 

[riptides]

My second house was cut into the woods. I had trees all around it and no open pastures or lawn. I hired a guy to clear the front, back and side of the house. They did it in a few days. I spent the next few months cutting downed trees for firewood. I had two massive burn pits that took care of the stumps. I also upgraded my tractor to a 30HP machine. It was perfect for moving firewood and doing "lawn" duties to reclaim the woodlands.

It looked nice after it was all done. I did not beat the machinery or me up in the process. We liked the cleared area so much, we settled on buying more open space a few years later. LOL.

 

[rademamj1]

I almost forgot to mention, the woods around my house is also characterized by lots of downed limbs and some trees that are rotting away. Absolutely ugly. The fresh wood stuff....meaning 3 years or newer I just pop it into the chipper and it's gone. Any wood thats 3 to 6 years goes into a burn pile. Typical all thats left is the rotten, decayed wood that we collected, and move that to a rental 15 cubic yard dumpster every couple of months. Then we start the selective clearing process which goes for firewood. When we are done, the grass grows very well between the remaining trees now, due to increased sunlight, and the wildlife has come back. Rabbits, squirrels and deer all seem to thrive in this type thinned out forest. But it's the number of birds that come are just incredible. I estimate we now have a 400% increase in birds on the property. I can't hear them due to bad hearing, but my wife says it sounds like a symphony orchestra.

 

[EddieWalker]

When I bought my land, it was very thick. There where so many saplings that the bigger trees where almost impossible to see. I tried mowing what I could with my 6ft rotary cutter, it it was limited to where I could get between the bigger stuff, and not destroy everything in the process. Then I learned about taking out trees with a backhoe. If the soil is still moist down deep in the Spring, I can just push over 6 inch trees. But more importantly, I learned how to take out saplings by pushing them over with the bucket, hooking the bucket teeth around the base of the sapling, and pulling it out of the ground. I cant count the tens of thousands of saplings that I've taken out this way.

then I would sort of pile, push them together and wrap a chain around them, and then drag them to my burn pile.

If I just wanted to clear/thin an acre or two, and I didn't own a backhoe, I would rent a small excavator. It would get into areas that I couldn't get my backhoe into, and it would be a lot faster and easier then a backhoe. Then I would use my tractor to drag them out to where I could burn them.

After a few years of doing this I bought a grapple. That made it ten times faster and easier to clean up an area, but if I didn't have the grapple, I would still just do it with a chain and dragging them.

I would not use a chainsaw. The stump is more work to deal with then the entire tree coming out all at once.

This does not apply to what is next to the house, that needs to be figured out based on the type of tree, the size of the tree and what will be the safest for the house.

 

[TnAndy]

When we bought ours, it was THICK timber right to the road....nothing cleared but a small trail leading a short way in. We hacked and sawed and burned brush by hand (no machine) for almost 2 years, then had a guy with a 450 JD dozer come in and knock out a rough driveway from the county road to the house site, and he also knocked down about 3 acres of timber that probably was pasture at one time (based on the piles of small rocks in various places near it that had likely been hand cleared), but let grow back to forest for 50-80yrs. Took me another year to get all the wood cut out of that 3 acres, either for house logs that went to the sawmill, or firewood I sold. That 3 acres looked like a B-52 strike zone for a long time.

450 JD guy also cut in our driveway and house seat. This was part way up into the property, the drive way wraps around to the left and appears in the top of that forest cut.

Loading logs to go to the sawmill to come back as lumber to build our house. Pile covered by plastic was a previous load that came back as lumber.

This shot is from the house today looking down to where that photo was taken with the hole chopped out of the woods.

The is the B-52 pasture with a hay barn built, around 10 years after I got it cleaned up. You can see how thick the woods still are at the edge of the cleared pasture.

I've had every kind of dozer from a 350 JD to Mitsubishi BD2H (I owned for about 10 years) to a 750 JD up here, backhoes, track loaders, mini-excavators, and full sized excavators doing work at some point over 40 years. I currently own a 7,000lb IHI mini-ex and a 40hp Yanmar tractor.

From that considerable experience, if I were wanting to clear, or thin to the point of growing grass between widely spaced trees, I would hire the work out to a guy with the largest excavator you can get, pre-mark what you want left, or the boundary of what you want taken out if clearing completely and turn him loose. The can do the most work in the shortest amount of time, including pile brush/stumps for burning, burying what is left over (stumps are real hard to burn completely), and so on. A medium size dozer (my excavator guy runs a 650 JD) with a root rake is the machine to follow the excavator for smoothing up and removing a lot of remaining roots/trash. This has worked out the most economical way I've found. I had him clear up 4acres of small-medium size timber on an adjoining property, it ran me right at $1500/ac couple years ago, but when he left, it was ready to sow grass. All I did was keep the logs that were fit to keep for saw logs and fire wood logs moved out of the way with my tractor while he cleared. His price included a 2 ground guys with chainsaws bucking up trees the excavator downed. I just drove the tractor, and seeded the acreage when the were done.

 

[HawkinsHollow]

I agree about renting a Mini Ex. It will clear some land. And it is fun and a good skill to have. Best bang for your buck for sure! My local
bobcat place will rent you one on Friday and pick it up Monday for a 1 day rental. But if you have more money than time just hire it out.

 

[oosik]

Ah, just in case and FYI. The average weight of freshly cut oak that is 24" in diameter - 200# per running foot of trunk. By species it varies from - 194# to 238# per running foot.

 

[mred2]

Sometimes it is better to rent it with an operator. If you don't have the skills, it may take you 3 times and long and not as good of job. If you want to learn to run the equipment, go for it.