Well I'm not fishing but here's what I'm looking at. The blade is supposedly 11 feet wide. It' not an option for removing it. I'll pay for the wide load and what it entails.
My dad bought 52 acres of abandoned farmland in 1968. The farm was in full swing with cleared fields around 1950 as per plane photos from the state agricultural department. Judging by the stone walls in the woods in the areas of the 1950's where they were already forested, it seems the land was originally settled around the late 1800's. At some point half of the land was abandoned around 1900-1940's ish. Then in 1950's someone reclaimed about 80 % of the land and farmed it.
Then fast forward to 1968. By the time my dad bought it, it was a freshly abandoned farm. He was not a farmer but a hunter. So he planted pine trees lower in the elevation which was open field. And he let the fields that were on a slope to just over grow.
So here we are in 2023. The pines he planted in 1970ish overtook the fields. Then they overtook the deciduous trees and we now have patches of mature pines that are higher in elevation than the deciduous trees. A few years later (now) we have pine groves with no undergrowth. Essentially dead for deer and wildlife.
So I looked into logging. All the loggers would be happy to come in a cut down the oak trees. Some of them said they would take away the pines while they were there. But to properly manage the land for the future for deer, it costs money. And there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest in people and companies willing to do this. They won't even give me an estimate. I guess they're so used to selling good lumber when I have scrap/crap pines that doesn't bring in the money and they don't know how to the job.
Anywho, I re-fuse to sell out to the make profit loggers as my neighbors did. That will only screw my kids and grandkids when I'm gone. I want to manage my land for deer because we are hunters. I want the land to be valuable for my kindred on down the line.
So my plan is to gradually push down the pine groves and let the new field regenerate naturally and go through field succession. Turn it back to a field. Let competition go on for a decade or so. And let it slowly turn back to a forest. In the meantime it will be thick thick growth that harbors much much wildlife. Then repeat that for the next pine grove and on and on...
At least that's my plan. The things I'm anticipating is that there will be dozer break downs and repairs. I will try to learn as much as I can. And I'll try to do as much as I can by myself.
Anyway, that's the plan. So we'll see. As of today, I have an agreed bid for a company to come pick it up and transport it to my place. They say no one is required for pick up or delivery. So That would be perfect. If in about a week or two that 80,000 behemoth appears in my lower field just waiting for me to fire up that would awesome. We'll see!
