Need advice going from trees to pasture

[Cityboyfarmer]

The last load of logs pulled out today. Now I have 25-30 acres of stumps to deal with. I am meeting with a dozier contractor today to see about getting the land root-raked and leveled enough for me to work with a tractor.

My ultimate goal is to board horses and raise some beef cattle primarily for my families consumption.

I'm looking for pointers and recommendations from anyone who has converted forest to pasture. The terrain is about 50% flat, the rest rolling and two pretty good hills.

1. What HP tractor would you suggest?
2. What implements will I need?
3. Any helpful suggestions appreciated.

 

[hudr]

no pun intended, but you have a tough row to hoe ahead of you. Nothing against the timber industry, but they do usually leave quite a mess to clean up. Lots of folks think they will have a golf course when they leave. Anyway, 25-30 acres, good bit of flat and some rolling hills. I wouldn't buy anything less than 60-65 Hp for a tractor. 4wd would be nice. An FEL will be a must. I have cleared some land and it seems you never get finished. Hopefully, the dozer and root rake will do most of the heavy work. They can pull stumps and windrow them up to be burned. Once the piles start to get small they will need to be 'stirred' and re piled to remove dirt from stumps and push the wood back together to burn even more. Also, if it is not already fenced, get that done pronto. If you already have livestock I would go ahead and put a few cattle on it ASAP as they will help keep it from growing up again quickly. You have no idea how fast a freshly cleared field can turn to weeds and scrub brush again. Also, we have had excellent luck w/ longhorn cattle as far as brush control. They tend to eat a bit rougher than other breeds and with cattle as high as they are right now, they will still sell good later on. Crossed w/ a beef breed they taste pretty good as well. Also, plan on never feeling finished with it. There will almost always be something growing on the field that you don't want. Just remember to look at the big picture. It will take a few seasons to get it into really good shape. Remember, if it was failry well covered w/trees, there are a lot of seed on the ground that are getting their first rays of sun. They will continue to sprout for a LONG time. Also, check with your local county agent and Feed & Seed store owners. They are usually a wealth of information about what will work in your area. This might be your first rodeo, but not theirs. Hope this helps. Good luck.

 

[Charolais]

hudr gave you some pretty good advice. I'll add that the hills part can be a problem if it's to steep for a tractor to operate on. But it can be done.

If you want grass the first thing you'll need to do after the stumps are removed is get the land in shape for a lime truck to operate on. Take soil samples. For most grasses the PH will have to be 7. On most timber land the PH will be low. I've cleaned up some that was in pine and used 4 tons of lime per acre to just get started. You'll have to check the PH every year for 4-5 years to get it stable and may have to apply lime each year for several years.

I don't like the dozer work when it comes to removing stumps. It leave holes that have to be filled in and those holes will settle and have to be leveled once and sometimes twice. It's expensive too. You also take away a lot of soil with the stumps and roots. But that's just me and lots of folks go with the dozer. I've never reclaimed that many acres either. 8 acres is the most I've done at a time. Each time I've done this the area being reclaimed was within the existing fence area. Also I had pine and the stumps rot out pretty fast.

I use Weathermax Roundup for brush control. I mix 1 gal. to 60 gal. of water. It'll kill any and everything that gets sprayed. The cows do the rest. As soon as the stumps are rotted out I run a rotary cutter over the stumps and they just turn to dust. The last area I did I used a 64hp tractor, 8 ft. offset disk then went back with a leveling disk. Here we do most of our seeding in the fall. So I seed from August on to Nov.

It takes some time the way I do it. You may need it in grass now. Good luck and don't forget the soil samples. If the ph isn't the right level you'll throw a lot of seed and fertilizer out there with little results.

 

[Cityboyfarmer]

Thanks for the info hudr & Charolais. Yes indeed, I do have a tough row to hoe! You are correct regarding the timber companies. I knew going in that it would be a mess when they finished. These cutters turned out to be far better than most. They wind rowed the debris from the loading area into 3 large windrows instead of leaving it scattered about. I had the trees thinned 7 years ago and did 2 controlled burns in-between that helped keep competing growth down.

I don't know about Texas or Virginia, but here, the sweet-gum saplings pop up as fast as dandelions. They are already sprouting in the first areas cut!

The dozier guy will be here July 5. On some of the bigger stumps he may have to bring in a track hoe$$$. It looks like it is going to cost between $3000-5000 to get the land to the point I can take over with a tractor. I am planning to do the horse pasture first because those critters will need smoother pasture than cattle, and I don't want any stump holes left for one to injure a leg in. (The things we do for our daughters!!)

Which tractors do y'all like? Here, I'm pretty much limited to Deere & Kubota, which are excellent company's. Those are the closest dealers. The JD dealer is only 7 miles from the house, and the Kubota dealer about 30. The rest are up toward Atlanta or south in Georgia's coastal plain where the majority of our states agricultural land is.

Keep the info coming! I'm going to be a knowledge spounge over the course of this project, and I will post photo's as I progress.

 

[Charolais]

We have sweetgum here too. That's mainly what I had to spray. They're easy to kill with the Weathermax as long it's mixed strong. I use a 4 wheeler and ele. sprayer. You can get in those tough places with that.

So far as tractors. take your pic. I use Long and Farmtrac. Long is 64hp and the Farmtrac is 73 hp. Back when we still row croped we ran IH, MF and Fords. Don't do much but hay and cattle now and went with the two brands for cheap HP. They've both been good tractors. I have a loader on the Farmtrac and it's used mainly for moving round bales.

Again on the lime. When you get the soil in a condition that all it needs is one more disking before seeding, apply the lime. It takes up to 6 months for the soil to react. I've always said lime is the best money spent on grass. If the PH isn't right all the fertilizer isn't being used and is wasted.

Fall seeding may work best in your area also. Here if we seed in the spring the grass may not have enough root system to make it through those hot dry spells. I don't have to ask you if it gets hot there. I've been in Atlanta in August and Sept. Whewwwwww. Man it gets hot there. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

If you broadcast your seed with a spreader try and find a cultipacker to run over the seeded area. If the soil is broke up deep and is real fine, run a cultipacker over before and after seeding to make a firm seed bed.

 

[MMM]

You're gonna need more than a dozer. A 225 or bigger trackhoe will work circles around a dozer on stump removal. Then bring in dozer with rake. Most good contractors will have both machines.

 

[redlevel]

Hey, Cityboy. Good to see more GA folks here.

I am assuming this field was in planted pines. I went through the same process on a 100 acre plot that was clearcut about 25 years ago. We hired a local contractor who did a good job with a pretty good size dozer, first with a blade, then with a root-rake to windrow the stumps. A good operator can leave minimal holes with a dozer. Pine stumps aren't that hard to get out of the ground. I realize that you are probably in the Piedmont area with more clay soil. (what county, by the way? I'm guessing somewhere north and east of Macon)

I believe you may have underestimated what it is going to cost. Beware of an off-the-cuff estimate. Some of these guys will "camp out" on you if you let them. I'm not saying they're necessarily dishonest, but they may not want to scare you off with a more realistic estimate. Remember, machine work at $60 per hour figures to close to $500 per day. Does he think he can finish in 10 days?

Lime is a factor. When I run into a situation where 4-5 tons per acre are recomended, I usually try to spread it over about three years. In my experience, the ph will come up just about as fast with one-and-one-half tons per acre for three consecutive years as it will when applying it all at once. Spreads the cost and gives you that deduction for three years.

What kind of grass are you going to plant. The hybrid bermudas are great, but expensive to plant. If you are going with bermuda, don't overlook common. It responds well to fertilizer, makes a very thick sod for those hillsides, and costs a fraction of what a hybrid does to establish. I bet you already have a lot of common around the edges. If so, and if you go with a hybrid, you better kill every sprig of the common. If not, you will wind up with a very expensive field of common bermuda, because it will overtake the hybrids. If you are going with something other than bermuda, you still better kill all of the common. It outgrows everything but Kudzu.

Tractor and equipment. You can get by with a smaller tractor, say 40 to 60 hp, as long as you match the equipment to the tractor. Four-wheel-drive is very desirable, but we got along without them for a long time. I would get a 60 to 80 hp tractor, a good sprayer, a good (read very heavy duty-no junk) harrow, and a good rotary mower. A heavy-duty chisel plow is a wonderful tool for pulling up those small chunks of roots the dozer leaves. I mean a real chisel, not those smaller things you see at the tractor yards. You can buy a good one used at most farm auctions. A loader would be nice, and to use it for keeping the windrows pushed up when you are burning them would be fine, but I've seen several good tractors ruined when people tried to use a farm-tractor loader in an industrial or forestry type job. A farm-tractor front-end, even a 4wd front-end, just isn't tough enough for a lot of the jobs people use them for. Unless money is no object, I would rather spend it on a quality harrow and mower than on the loader. A good dozer operator shouldn't leave you that much loader work.

The cheapest way to do it is to just leave the stumps, get a tractor that you can harrow and mow between the rows with, burn it every chance you get, scatter some common bermuda seed and harrow it in. Use the sprayer and 2-4D to control most of the weeds and some of the brush. Use Remedy and Grazon herbicide to control the tougher brush. You can establish a bermuda grass pasture suitable for cattle in 3 years this way. All but the largest pine stumps should be rotten in 5 years. If you want a horse pasture sooner, fence out 4-5 acres to clear with the dozer, and you can probably establish it in two years.

Sorry for the essay, but it is late, and I ain't sleepy yet.

By the way, I'm in Taylor Co.

 

[Cityboyfarmer]

Hi redlevel!

I'm in Monroe County close to Bolingbroke. Believe it or not, my soil has a very high sand content. When we excavated for my 9' basement, it was sandstone type soil all the way. The only place we hit red Georgia clay was in the septic drain field, which was good because it perks better than the other soils on my property. Problem was that the soil scientist pulled his samples from the less perkable soil, so I have over 300' of 56" deep field lines with 3' of gravel. Been living here 6 years now with zero septic problems and don't anticipate any. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

My dozier guy is also a forester and seems to think he can get it done in that time frame based on his experience digging up loblolly pine roots in the past. He has a good reputation and appears to be a straight shooter. We shall see. Worst case, I'll shoot for a 10 acre horse pasture and stump-rot the rest. I hear there are products that will accelerate stump rot, so I may try that route if need be. I might even try some goats!

I'm considering going with coastal bermuda and rye to begin with. From what I have learned, that is the best route for a rookie like me to take. Looks like it will be well into August before I am ready to plant.

Cost is a big factor in my tractor purchase, of course. At the same time, I surely don't want to go too small and wind up frustrated. I'm shopping for the most machine for the least money (isnt everybody? /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif ) I want to get as educated as possible to make the best equipment choices.

Thanks for your input. It is good to hear from a fellow Georgian! Keep the info coming!

 

[froggy]

You might want to consider this route for removing the remaining stumps:

"Any kind of sugar or nitrogen product will do the trick. First, start by drilling holes in the stump. Make the holes as large and deep and closely spaced as possible. Fill the holes with sugar, molasses, syrup, old jellies, jams, candies, buttermilk, or fertilizer of any kind. This is a good place to dispose of any synthetic fertilizers you might still have around the place, although organics would certainly be better. Next, wet the stump and additions and cover with a thick layer of shredded mulch. How long the rotting takes depends on the type of tree."

 

[tjkadar]

We just recently bought a M6800 and have been pleased with the tractor so far. We are looking at refurbishing an existing 30 acres of field that was once row-cropped as well as clearing and establishing pasture on another 30 or so acres.

It has been mentioned here several times, but I'll say it again. Remember to check the soil pH before you plant. If you're going to sprig, you want the pH right or you'll wind up spending a lot of money and not getting any grass.

I'm tempted to try one of the new hybrids that you can broadcast seed. I think it was called a Cheyenne... We have a small 3 acre pasture in the back that could be perfect for such an experiment.