There's an acre of my land that looks a lot like this:
well, not a lot, it actually looks precisely like it, because that's it
Anyways, I call it "the jungle". It's too overgrown even for deer to walk through; there's a bit of (himalayan/invasive) blackberry, but it can barely get a toehold; there's a sh*tton of poison oak, most of it growing up as vines attached to trees and other shrubs - some of the stalks of the vines are over an inch thick, and it's up to 30' up into trees... some excessively sized manzanita, various scrub oaks, toyon shrubs, other shrub, gray pine and ponderosa pine.
The qualifying part for this thread:
In later spring through early winter, the ground is too hard and holds tight to everything, but right now the ground is as good as I've ever seen it for clearing land - I'm able to push over oaks up to 6" in diameter and instead of their roots holding, with a bit of upward pull while pushing (courtesy of the piranha tooth bar and FEL action) the trees are lifting right out of the ground. Same with the manzanita, they're not just breaking off, they're pulling clear out. I'm using the PTB lightly on the ground to grab shrubs and vines, and a large number of them are getting pulled as well... all at the same time as having
just enough traction. A bit slippery here and there but workable.
Unfortunately I don't have a
chipper - my use of one would be just too sporadic for me to merit spending full price on one, and I haven't seen a unicorn low price one. Thus, I make piles; I use my big loppers (geared fiskar bypass unit - easily cuts 2" green anything) to trim down trunks or chop things into ~8' lengths that will go on my officially 4x4 burn pile eventually (seriously they expect us to have 4'x4' burn piles - you can't have a hot burn pile in 4x4, I drop 4' tall bundles of about 8'x6' branches... never had a complaint because I dry stuff before torching it, and then there's enough burning to dissipate any smoke that happens).
I basically cleared about 2500 square feet which doesn't sound like a lot but it was a
lot of greenery, and it took me about 20 minutes on the tractor. If I didn't care about making piles, I could probably clear everything safe to get at (it gets pretty steep in some spots on this jungle) in a day but then I'd have a heck of a time separating stuff out into burn-pile'able units later. Instead, I'm doing a chunk of clearing, and then working on making piles, then figuring out where I can put the piles for drier times...
Unfortunately this weekend is all rain, so I probably won't get back on the tractor for a week or so. My pasture/grassy areas are already on my no-drive list; there's some nice soil there, but right under it is slick clay, and now the hill is going to get saturated. At least I left myself a bunch of trees I need to process into firewood and burn pile bundles, even if there's nowhere safe to drive to put them for later...
I was hopeful I could save it because I moving very slowly and minimal throttle when the engine banged to a stop.
! I consider it a blessing. I'm going to have my listening ears on for quite a while once I get her fully back in service!