Advice/Help Clearing Land

World of difference between clearing and clearing and grubing.

You can't beat a kg for clearing price wise.

I would buy a drone and spray.

Has anyone watched on youtube the burn box's? The things can be leased and are made on skids, i have often wondered while i am stumping/clearing with excavator that if i had a burn box i could drag it along behind me and toss the stumps and such into it. The dirt and ashes fall though the grate in the bottom and it would be a one man show. Back to the muchers, i was digging large stumps on a job that had a 15 acre spot of smaller underbrush, so the landowner hired a tracked mulcher to run over that area. Well it looked great at what he did and he covered a fair amount off ground, pretty fast, but after a rain i spent most my time pulling him out the bog and the $ 300 hour rate he charged was too much and he was asked to leave. I had to go over his entire area and hunt every snag, root ,and stump he grazed over. I felt sorry for the guy who had to subsoil that section cause i know i didnt find it all. When said and done a heavy duty bush hog would have done same job he did , much cheaper. I do think it would work ok for pasture land if you keep it sprayed and let time be on your side.

SML Winds- The 140 hp machine i own is only small as I only clear small tracks of land however the principle is the same. You can find what I do on Facebook, CTC Mulching . I don't run the mulch into the ground but leave it covering the soil for the reason that a lot of my work is in hill country so there is Zero erosion. Now for 250 acres a wheel tractor around 300-400 HP with ether hydrostat or deep reduction drive would be the go. As for attachments there are quite a few ways of going. 1 A AHWI mulcher and stumpgrinder each being an attachment, all cat 3 linkage. 2 FAE stonecrusher is more than capable of chewing up trees and stumps and leaving the ground ready for seed. Seppi also has similar equipment 3, The Tre-eta is the ultimate for clearing what you have. It's the only truly front mounted mulcher ever made and can clear up to 1 acre per hour and a finished job at that. Going down the wheel tractor path May be better in that you can sell the whatever attachment you decide to buy for the cleanup and still have a tractor for future farm operations.
IMO the stumper shown in your first post leaves the waste to chunky for my liking and whats the point of going that deep anyway. Have you ever pulled a wooden fence post thats been in the ground for 50 years or more. The only rot is about 6" above ground and the same below. Rot is caused by a mixture of air and moisture, so stumps ground below a level where air can't get to will not decompose and I can't see the sense in total stump removal if it's not going to interfere with future land use. All that's happening is that you are spending a **** load of bucks for no real result.

td25c said:

No worries Mate . That possum will come a runnin out of the bush when the K/G comes through
.

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Over here the possums come out minced but don't tell the fur huggers

Hey Scrub, have you ever seen what a dedicated mulcher can do in a day with a good operator in the seat.. My little 140HP machine has more hydraulic power than most excavators and maybe the bloke you saw was on hourly rate.
Most native species won't regen if the stump can't get light to it. So it the jobs done right there's no need for spraying anymore than there is with dozers. Most land is going to need fertilizer after clearing no matter what method is used.

Tones-thanks so much for the helpful response! You have my attention with the mulcher! So, a mulcher can clear well enough that you are ready to use the land immediately? Is that for pasture land, crop land, or both? Rocks are not an issue for me at all so I can get down in the dirt some. Erosion is not an issue either.

At one acre per hour, I don't think the machine could cost enough to make it not worth buying! (I could be wrong if it is 7 digits!) When you say a "wheeled tractor" what are you referring to? Are you talking about large size typical farm tractor? That would be useful for me if so! How much do the tre-eta heads cost?

I want to get a machine that allows me to move efficiently but don't need the biggest if the costs gets ridiculous. As someone told me one time, they had a skid steer mulcher that everyone said was good for clearing 1-2 acres. He said I clear 1 acre 100x's and I have cleared 100 acres.

Yair . . . .

Gotcha Tones. As I said they certainly have their applications and as you say in most cases there is no need for stump removal. Just had a powerline cleared down the front of my place and we couldn't push the larger trees because the phone and fibre cables had been ripped in and no one knew where they were.

It's no fun cutting off three foot Iron Barks at ground level but acceptable to Ergon. Specs are changing and power lines no longer have to be grubbed.


I see more and more Government work is being mulched with a large John Deere and rear linkage mulcher being used instead of heaping and burning on recent Highway upgrades.

Where the mulchers shine of course is in selective clearing and for that there is no doubt it is the way of the future and I believe you are probably getting in on the ground floor and wish you all the best. I seem to remember you had a thread going on this style of clearing some time back.

Cheers.

Yep Scrub, QLD has a zero burn policy addministerd by DERM. I was talking to a bloke who has 14000 arces of Pines (Ceader) out Thargaminda way. It was chained and windrowed quite a few years ago but never burnt.He is no longer allowed to even burn the rows.
Thanks for the compelment on ground floor but Iv'e at this game for 10yrs and getting near time to park up. As you may know its a bugger having a 35yr head on a nearly 70yr old body.

Yair . . .

Tones. I was not aware of any zero burn policy.

It certainly is possible to get permits here on the coast . . . folks have to realise if it isn't burnt under controlled conditions it will burn, perhaps catastrophically, somewhere down the track.

As I think I mentioned on that other thread, the blanket of chips from roadside mulching burnt for days after bush fires.

I didn't realise you were getting on a bit, you come over as a young bloke. (big grin)

Cheers.

Where do I find a website for this tre-eta mulching machine? I found a video that looked neat because it said it went 300mm below the surface but that is all I have found.

Also, Tones--when you say wheeled tractor are you talking about a large farm tractor?

Anyone have any experience with Fecon? Someone I know recommended a Fecon mulching machine.

Thanks again for the help!

You can look at FAE soil stabilizer but you will need a large a tractor like an 8370R john deere with IVT transmission to pull it will grind about 8 inches below ground.

SMLWinds said:

Guys-I would really appreciate some experienced advice and opinions. I have a large tract of land (700 acres), of which about 600 is in timber. I am cutting the timber and would like to clear as much of the cutover land as I can to make open pasture/farm land. I have no experience in large machines or clearing land.

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We have about the same lay on the ground in south Indiana . Allot of trees & forest with scattered farm fields & pasture in between due to the terrain .

My advice would be keep about a third or half of the property in trees . Just from the pictures of Tappahannock VA it looks to be mostly wooded .

It's that way for a reason Bro . We have similar ground on our farm and it's simply best left in forest many times due to the lay of the land .

Gentle sloping land can be made in to pasture & possibly farm ground .

I would scale back the project a bit and look in to selective cutting the timber land and possibly clearing some of it for pasture & farm ground .

I tell ya what , Tappahannock looks a lot like home . I Like it ! https://www.heavyequipmentforums.co...s-on-the-forum&p=150002&viewfull=1#post150002

TD25C-Thanks for the comments! I don't think your approach is unreasonable. While you are right that most land that is not cleared is not cleared for a reason, that isn't always true in our remote area and doesn't hold with my land fully. The vast majority of my property (which you just barely missed with your aerial photos) is pancake flat. There are a few hills and streams but I strongly suspect this land used to be farm land and for whatever reason was planted in trees about 50 years ago. With the river there are a lot of streams and creeks but it also creates river flats and the land is pretty flat in the nearby areas.

If I do elect to clear about half of the land, I still have to decide how to go about it. This forum responses have been very very informative (thanks!) but also muddied the waters a bit as there seem to be a lot of differing opinions from folks with more experience than myself. Any further thoughts and comments are very much welcomed!

Befor you purchase any machine look at your other jobs you need to do also. If i owned every machine that worked best in each differnt area and job i did, jenkins county wouldn't hold it all. You said you have a budget and want a couple machines to have around and that you are going to get farmers and yourself to run. Purchase something they can run easily and is not dedicated to just grinding a stump ( which by the way i say is great running down pine plantation rows) but when you get to the large stumps and there are always large stumps, it is gonna take alot of grinding. Now you have to park it when land is ready to plant and go get something else to do any other jobs on your list. Just dont spend all your funds on a dedicated machine. A mulcher, grinder, KG blade all have there place but an excavator will do all the jobs and is cheap/easy to operate. We can still burn here and it still leaves the carbon as ash, which is easier to mix back into soil than mulch. We will all have to deal with what Tones has to deal with one day (no burning) and mulching/grinding but for now the GA. forestry will put firebreaks around piles or the whole block and burn it for you. There is no right way or wrong way but have versatile equipment.

whitemike,the cost of digging big stumps out with an excavator don't stop with the stump out of the ground. The hole has to be filled , the stump has to be moved to a burn heap etc etc. Tomorrow I have to grind some large hard wood stumps and Ill bet you a dollar to a nob of goat **** and you can hold the steaks in yer mouth, Ill have the job done away faster than a 30 ton excavator and there will be nothing more to do, no holes to fill, no trucks to cart anything away, no dump fees. These stumps are around 1.5m highX 1m across and about 20mins for each stump with a 140 hp machine.

All great points and good advice. There is certainly a happy medium. I don't want a machine that will take 2-3x as long to do the job but at the same time, versatility will be very helpful. So, if there is a close second, maybe you don't get THE best machine for a specific job but you want it to be comparable in the work it will do. I get that and do have value in versatility.

With that said, I have some growing interest in the mulching option. I didn't know there were mulching machines that would go below grade. If I can get a mulching machine that will take care of everything 8-12" below grade that is pretty enticing!

Tones-I checked out your Facebook page. What is the big yellow forestry machine on your page? Is that the 140hp machine you reference? Does it mulch below grade?

I looked at the Fecon website and found a "soil hog" attachment that can be put on a forestry machine or standard tractor. I assume something like this is what was suggested earlier. It looks like you would have to drive painfully slow, but I am not so sure it wouldn't overall be fastest (slow and steady!)

One more question that will sound really basic. If you go the excavator and dozer route, you have to dig sizable stumps with the excavator. I assume that the very small tiny stumps in the 1-3 inch range you just plow through with the dozer, right? How big does a stump have to be before you have to address is with an excavator instead of just plowing through it with a D6 dozer?

Yair . . .

SMLWinds. I really believe you are over thinking this.

It appears you are in the fortunate position of being able to purchase an excavator and a dozer . . . these are two common useful machines capable of a multitude of jobs.

In my opinion purchasing a forestry mulcher for one small clearing job seems a bit extreme.

I have cleared hundreds of thousands of acres from large tracts of farming country to the selective clearing of house blocks. If I were in your position I would handle it like this . . . .

Buy a 150--200 hp dozer with a conventional manual angle blade with a tree pusher a tilt ram. three tyne rippers and a walk in stick rake.

Alone this machine will do most of what you need to on the clearing side as well as building roads, ponds and other earthworks . . . it would struggle with very large stumps and for these you could buy say a twenty ton excavator.

I would start on the lighter stuff walking it down with rake and stacking at ninety degrees to the walk down direction. We haven't seen any pictures of your vegetation but there most likely not be too many trees you can't tip out after a rip around with the dozer . . . drop the centre tyne for clearing and ripping around trees.

Don't even mess with big stumps they are left for the excavator . . . oh to be in your position. (Big Grin)

I don't know about the "burnability" of your species but a ploy that works well over here on very large stumps is, rather than dig them out and having to wrestle with a five ton root ball I have just had the excavator dig around them, washed the dirt off with a firefighter (I use a thousand litre pod on the pickup) stack timber around them and burn them all in place.

Finally I should mention on the dozer you should spend some money on a proper protection canopy and screens . . . not so important on the excavator as hopefully it will be mostly digging stumps.

This is a decently fitted out farm machine . . . .




Cheers

SMLWinds said:

TD25C-Thanks for the comments! The vast majority of my property (which you just barely missed with your aerial photos) is pancake flat.

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I'll fuel up the plane & make another pass tomorrow .


That's cool your ground lays good . More than likely was clear at one time , may have a 50 to 60 year growth on it ?


We run in to small patches like that from time to time .

Big part of my work is still agricultural related in some form or another . Have one retired farmer that we work for every year doing something on his place . Might be hacking back some trees around the edge of the fields or working on waterways & tile drainage .

He's 93 years old & still sharp as a tack . A dinner time one afternoon I asked him when was all the farm ground in our area cleared ?

He paused for a bit and said it was done in small stages at first ( early to mid 1800's )

Buy 1900 the vast majority was done ( before yellow iron ) .

Between 1940 to 1970 the diesel powered yellow iron was just mopping up what had begun over a century before . Kind of mind boggling how it all came about and what was accomplished in the past .

Took generations to do it all and keep it in shape in the present .

Nice looking tractor Scrub Puller !

Yeah Scrub , have you noticed lately the more high teck a society becomes the harder is to accomplish a simple task ? ( Big Grin ).