Backhoe or excavator ?

[woodsy]

Looking into removing some rocks from an acre or two of old field to put into crop production.
Some of them will probably go 2 ton, maybe more .
More than a hundred of them in all, visible from the surface .
They will need to be moved to the wood line/rock wall.

Anyone have experience doing this or familiar with the most efficient piece of equipment for the job ?

[DaleK]

Excavator with a thumb.

[uncle Will in In.]

If you can see 100 of them, there are probably a thousand you can't see.. An excuvator would be nesseary to handle rocks as large at you discribe. Digging a hole beside these rocks, then pushing them down in it would be faster then moving them out of the field. That way you would have dirt to backfill the hole. You would have to do that much digging to get the rock on top the ground any way.

[Harry Chickpea]

Those aren't rocks, those are boulders. Have you figured out if it would be cost effective to do what you plan? With equipment rental and fuel costs, the short growing season in Maine, and the possibilities of crop loss, and not even counting your labor as a cost, I would bet that you would be twenty years before you broke even.

There is also a cycle that rocks go through in New England. You have heard of farmers "growing" rocks. It actually does happen. Moisture under rocks in the ground freezes. The frozen water takes more space than liquid, so it pushes the rock upward. In the spring, mud gets under part of the rock so it doesn't go back down. The effect is that over a few years the rocks near the surface are lifted into the paths of plows.

You'll rarely see a free-standing stone wall in New England. It isn't because people push them over, it is from this type of action, which is different on the shaded side compared to the sunny side.

Even if you clear the field of boulders, as a "virgin" crop field, you could expect at least an additional dozen years of lugging out rocks.

[woodsy]

I like that idea of digging a hole beside the rock and burying them,
hadn't thought of that
Excavator w/thumb it is then.
How much area actually gets de-rocked/bouldered depends on how fast the digging goes.
Notice i said 1-2 acres need working, may only get 1/2 acre done w/budget
i'm working with.
Yes Harry, we do grow rocks in this neck of the woods, some even have deep roots , ask me how i know.
I've loosened up a few with the plow over the years and dug em up and dragged them to the woods.
Looking like about $70.00 hr for the actual digging. Lets see how much can get done in 10 hours, LOL.

[uncle Will in In.]

If you hire someone to dig and push the rocks into the hole, you could use your own tractor and loader to backtill the holes. Save much bucks on the excuvator rental.

[Ken in Maine]

I'm in Maine also... I rent a mini-excavator for a weekend... It costs about $400.00 with delivery and pick-up. The smaller ones I move but rather than waste time trying to dig up boulders and filling in it is much easier to dig a hole next to them and bury them deeper. I figure it would take a couple decades or more for the frost to work them back up to the surface. Beside have you priced a wheeler load of fill... That's about $10.00 per yard. A big boulder can take a load or more of fill.

I'm in Saint Albans near Newport... If you want to see rocks check out our websites.

[bignugly]

Sounds like you have had a successful rock garden! LOL

[highlands]

A properly sized excavator with a thumb and a good operator can move pretty fast tossing rocks out of a field.

For some situations a bulldozer may be better.

It's sort of a levels problem.

If the soil is too rocky then the rocks are going to come up out of the soil in the future (they grow here) so using it as pasture may be a better choice.

Cheers,

-Walter Jeffries
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
ButcherShop | Sugar Mountain Farm

Check out our Kickstarting the Butcher Shop project at:
Building an on-farm Butcher Shop at Sugar Mountain Farm by Walter Jeffries — Kickstarter

[fantasymaker]

Id think pretty had about having a tractor with a stoneboat haul the rocks out of the feild. The Excavater can Load the rock on the boat faster than it can dig the hole then you have a rock clear feild
If the boat is attached to the three point lower links the tracktor can haul and dump the rocks pretty fast.
Of course once your to the point where the excavator cant lift the rock its gonna be a lot of digging anyway ya look at it!