Grading What to do about dangerous debris ?

[flusher]

I have a few acres and the back couple seem like they were used as a dump by the people that owned the farm the land was originally part of. You can walk across the property a couple times and fill a coffee can with broken glass, metal pieces, and barb wire.

My son has yet to injure himself while playing in the field, which we try to avoid, but the dogs have been hurt several times in the past year.

Does anybody have suggestions on how to remove, or at least reduce the danger caused by the glass and metal shrapnel?

Most of it is too small to catch with a rake.. Thought about tilling and planting a native grass over it, but not sure if that would keep the stuff down.

Thanks in advance for any advice you may have.

You just have to bite the bullet and pick up the stuff by hand. I had the same problem when I bought 10 acres of flat pasture land 5 years ago for my new house. The weeds were 3-4 feet tall and I didn't dare try to mow it with my brand new Kubota B7510HST until I walked every square yard and picked up all the junk that was lurking in the weeds. Glad I did because some of the steel pipe and barbed wire would have done a number on my tractor and mower. I found old tires/rims, T-posts, lots of baling wire, an old steel bathtub, assorted golfing irons, etc.

 

[slowzuki]

Depending on the size of the trash plowing and replanting works.

 

[Nitro-Fish]

I misunderstood your problem, I thought you had a dumpsite on your back couple of acres, not that your back couple of acres is a dump site! Sounds like you may have purchased property that used to be a junk yard? So much for just digging a hole and pushing everything into it, that would be a HUGE hole. I guess you need to get some excavation contractors to look at it and give you some pricing & input; trash is like rocks, eventually it will come to the top.

 

[Dutch445]

I'm working on a similar situation, purchased 2 adjacent acres
to my property, giving me a corner lot now. The previous
owner had used it as storage for stuff, truck trailers etc,
and it had become quite an eyesore so I made him an offer
that if he had the lot cleaned up, i'd purchase it.. He accepted,
and hired some scrap people to come in and start removing the
misc trailers etc. took them 9 or 10 months of cutting everything
into size to fit into a pick up truck and take to the scrap yard.
after they finished, i had quite a bit of small stuff left to pick,
so i made piles for burnable stuff, metal stuff, and other.
I can burn the brush, wood etc. (we had a huge party!)
the metal i can take to a landfill for free. There was also a
pickup truck load of stuff I could take to the town's "free dump" day.
After that, it was raking out what was left, used a magnet bar
to pick up a million nails that were left from the previous fires
the scrap people had to burn wood out of aluminum truck floors etc.
Then walking around and picking up what I could see. I am not planning on
digging much, because I know there is a lot of junk buried, stumps,
brick, other hard fill, along with who knows what else. But, as last summer
went along and the town/county started their local road maintenance of
scraping shoulders and ditches, I offered to take as much as they wanted
to bring, and eventually I had 20 10wheelers of sandy sod dumped on the
property that I covered about 1 acre with this year. The rest I'll handle in
the future, (but I did the worst of it by far). I planted grass seed, and then
we got torrential rains,, but some of the seed stayed and next year I should
be able to mow it. I won't have any younguns running around barefoot on it,
but we should be able to use it for parties, or recreation, or extra parking if
we have a lot of people at the house.
sorry, got long winded there, but it was just a lot of hand picking,
I did half the property last summer, will work on the rest next summer.

do what I didn't do,, take pics!

 

[beeforty]

I have taken a roll of black plastic weighted down to kill what is growing to get down to bare ground. It's slow,I did 20' x 100' at a time but works. Then just move it over to the next strip. But my favorite would be to have your local fire department come in and "practice" wild land fire control. Fire up the BBQ and treat them when they are done while they get some practice in. And you don't have to worry about calling them because you let it get too big and out of control with your weed torch and old deisel!!:thumbsup: