land clearing options

[AnthonyF]

Hi all
I recently purchased 20 acres which is attached to my current 17 acres and want to clear it for pasture. It is all heavily treed with mostly poplar. Some larger stuff (12" plus) as well as lots of saplings and underbrush. There is also some fir that would/could be sold off to offset cost. In my area (central British Columbia) there is very little value for poplar. I want this to be turned into pasture not hayfeild. Time wise would like to be able to use it for grazing within 3 years. My first though was to get an excavator to come push over all the poplar ppile the burn it possibly saving a little for firewood. Another thought Ihad was to have a local guy with aa forestry mulches come out and just clear the fence line, fence it and put cows on it right away to knock down what they could over the next few years. Along those lines I thought I could get the mulches to take down absolutely everything he ccould which is up to 8" as he said he could also mulch about 4" underground as well. With whatever route I go iI would be seeded next spring to try and limit the regrowth. Any thoughts? Suggestions? Experiences? Or something I'm not thinking of? I like the idea of clearing it all with the eexcavator because it will make the most pasture out of the land that is there. However I like the idea of mulching everything as it puts nutrients back into the soil. As well the up size of just clearing the fence line is obviously way less cost. Thanks.

[Bearfootfarm]

I'd do the mulching and leave the bigger trees for now.

If you bulldoze them you'll lose a lot of topsoil whereas mulching will add nutrients to the soil.

If things try to re-sprout, get a few goats to run with the cows

[Fennick]

Some questions for you.

Is it flat land or sloping land?

Are you in an arid region or a wet region?

How far away is the land from the closest spawning streams? Is any water running through the land in question?

What is your source of water?

[AnthonyF]

The land is fairly flat but there are a few small hills. Nothing a tractor or pickup couldnt drive around on though. We have fairly dry summer with moderately wet springs and long cold winters. There is no water on the property there is a stream about 200 yards north of the property though that is on someone else's land. There are a few wet areas on the property where I plan to hopefully dig a shallow well. Nothing for irrigation though.

As far as bull dozing goes I wasn't going to get a cat. It would be an excavator which could leave more of the soil. And as far as goats go they are not an option .

[Jennifer L.]

I would go with the forestry mulcher and keep any of the trees that have value, i.e., get rid of the poplars and keep things that can be lumber. I'd do it this way just because it would take forever for the cows to make big headway on the field. They'll stomp out small stuff, but a good sized tree will be left alone.

[agmantoo]

AnthonyF

I have my own excavator and I typically clear some land each year. Some years back I learned that the excavator is the best method I know for clearing land with minimal value trees. When in a hurry I do not bother working with folks wanting fire wood as they just hinder the task at hand and they could be a risk to have on the property. If I can find a professional that has equipment and wants to clear the above ground trees I give them to him. Then I take the excavator and dig the stumps. Very little topsoil is disturbed. Moving the stumps is rather time consuming so I just windrow them. Later I will knock the soil from the stumps and burn the stumps. It usually takes into the third year from the excavator work to get the soil producing pasture forage. PS...I cleared these hillsides at a different time also. Good Luck.

Work in process North view


Afterward South view


This was a gully that I converted into a small pond. I had cleared this "fairway" the year prior.

[haypoint]

I am puzzled by the frequency that I hear folks that buy an open field and are asking about how to quickly make it a valuable forest. Just as puzzling are those that buy a wooded parcel and want a field.

In this situation, I understand that is joins what you already had, so I'll cut you some slack.

In most areas of the country, where crops and pasture grow, the land was cleared long ago and stayed that way. In my community, soil type changes with the elevation. The lower areas are sandy muck with boulders. Above that is marginally drained clay. The higher areas are thick with rocks an course sand.

The low land can sometimes be used as summer pasture, but mostly poplar trees and brush. The clay is farm land, hay crops and pasture. The wettest areas end up unplowed and trees and brush takes over. The high ground, too rocky to farm, drains so quickly that only deep rooted trees survive.

So, without seeing your new purchase, I wonder why someone gave up farming and why no one has attempted to return it to pasture in all these years? What did they know that you and I don't.

Clearing a parcel that size reminds me of a carpenters slogan: "You can have it done right, you can have it done quickly, you can have it done inexpensively. Pick two."
Any cheap fix won't be quick and satisfactory.

Perhaps, you could get a crew to come in and chip everything and haul it all away, leaving you with a bunch of living stumps. Perhaps you could broadcast pasture grass seed and rake it into the soil, then spray Crossbow herbicide on the new tree growth, each year for a few years. You'll be surprised how fast 20 years fly by as the stumps weaken.

[Rectifier]

Haypoint, to wrap that up in one sentence it would be "The land looks like that for a reason"

This is why I try to maintain my land in the state I purchased it. What looks like a small project often turns into a megaproject when you realize the full implications of doing it. After hundreds of years of cultivation, it has tended toward the state in which it is the most economically viable.

Sure I build fence, I cut brush and small trees to keep forests from encroaching onto my other lands. But pasture stays pasture, cropland is cropland and the forests and sloughs stay that way as well.

Anthony: If you want to graze within a few years you are going to have to hire a cat or large excavator to get the stumps out so you can work up the soil to plant it and hopefully kill poplar roots. Excessive mulching will just create trash that will be hard to seed into.

Cows will clean out the undergrowth but they will not significantly damage poplars or suppress them. Burn everything you can to return it to the soil and again, try to cook those poplar roots. Prepare for a lot of mowing in subsequent years as poplar shoots come up everywhere!

[Fennick]

Originally Posted by haypoint

So, without seeing your new purchase, I wonder why someone gave up farming and why no one has attempted to return it to pasture in all these years? What did they know that you and I don't.

Originally Posted by Rectifier

Haypoint, to wrap that up in one sentence it would be "The land looks like that for a reason"

The property is in central British Columbia. The OP hasn't said so but considering the location there's the possibility that the property is untouched virgin land that is as it has always been. It could be that it never was lived on, never farmed or never a pasture at any time. There is a LOT of untouched land in central and northern British Columbia.

[watcher]

If there's any way you can afford it find someone with something like this



The cost is way outweighed by the speed and outcome.

[haypoint]

Originally Posted by Fennick

The property is in central British Columbia. The OP hasn't said so but considering the location there's the possibility that the property is untouched virgin land that is as it has always been. It could be that it never was lived on, never farmed or never a pasture at any time. There is a LOT of untouched land in central and northern British Columbia.

I guess I don't know much about the virgin poplar forests of BC.

[Rectifier]

I, on the other hand, grew up in BC. My grandparents' cattle roamed the mountains, eating the grass and low plants among the pine forests. This required a large number of acres/head and a certain amount of trust that the cows would be recoverable and that wolves wouldn't take too many calves.

When it came time for me to buy my own land, I moved to the prairies.

Doing battle with trees is HARD work, and the reason that large tracts of land in BC are untouched is because nobody wanted to do the work or didn't find it economically viable (I know for one I think the whole of BC is not economically viable, but that's just me...)

That's not to say it shouldn't be done, after all someone had to do that pioneering effort at some time! However, it will cost both time and money, and that's a fact. There's a reason that for that huge jump in price between treed < cleared < broke land per acre.

Out here in SK, even the "virgin land" has been worked if it was possible to do so. I bought some crown land from the government this year, and about a quarter of the land had been broken and rockpicked and the rest largely cleared for native grass pasture back in the homesteading days.

[haypoint]

Originally Posted by Rectifier

I, on the other hand, grew up in BC. My grandparents' cattle roamed the mountains, eating the grass and low plants among the pine forests. This required a large number of acres/head and a certain amount of trust that the cows would be recoverable and that wolves wouldn't take too many calves.

When it came time for me to buy my own land, I moved to the prairies.

Doing battle with trees is HARD work, and the reason that large tracts of land in BC are untouched is because nobody wanted to do the work or didn't find it economically viable (I know for one I think the whole of BC is not economically viable, but that's just me...)

That's not to say it shouldn't be done, after all someone had to do that pioneering effort at some time! However, it will cost both time and money, and that's a fact. There's a reason that for that huge jump in price between treed < cleared < broke land per acre.

Out here in SK, even the "virgin land" has been worked if it was possible to do so. I bought some crown land from the government this year, and about a quarter of the land had been broken and rockpicked and the rest largely cleared for native grass pasture back in the homesteading days.

I guess virgin means something different to you than it does to me.

[Rectifier]

LOL, said land was unavailable for purchase up until the last few years, and was covered by "no-break" lease agreements for decades after it was taken from the original homesteaders presumably for failing to uphold their end of the homestead act.

As such much of it has reverted to a "mostly" native state, and it was actually protected by conservation easements that I had to get removed, as wildlife habitat and an example of "mostly" native prairie.
I guess that was the point, that out here on the prairies there is no such thing as virgin land, except waaaay up north.

[miraclemant]

I highly doubt you have Popular, I lived for 25 years in western Washington (Port Angeles), and I would be money that you have Alder, which does have a market for them. just double check with someone else to make sure of the species.

[miraclemant]

I was a land developer for 15 years (ended b/c of 3 month coma), I have cleared a LOT of land, what I found worked the best for me (in western Washington), was I had a dozer, with a brush rake on it (rake had thick tines that would go down 12" into the ground, thus keeping blade from touching ground), this got all the roots. Then for the larger stumps, I would use our LARGE excavator for pulling large stumps and stacking everything into huge piles for burning. Hope this helps.

[miraclemant]

thinking more about it, if I was a individual (not a land developer), I would NOT pay the huge amount of money to bring in a LARGE excavator to clear the large stumps, I would just leave them, let them start the slow process of decay, and wait about 2 years, then wait for a week forecast of nice weather (I know, probably August in B.C.) then take a cordless drill, and drill ½" hole all over the top of the stump, as deep as your drill bit will go. then pour in Diesel into all the holes, wait an hour or two, refill holes with diesel, and use a torch to set the stumps on fire. this will allow the diesel to soak into the stump, and get you a better burn. Good luck, hope I helped.

[Fennick]

Originally Posted by miraclemant

I highly doubt you have Popular, I lived for 25 years in western Washington (Port Angeles), and I would be money that you have Alder, which does have a market for them. just double check with someone else to make sure of the species.

He may have alder too but given his location of central BC - from south central BC to northern BC and into Yukon and Alaska there is plenty of BC's western Balsam Poplar, western Black Cottonwood and the hybridized trees resulting from cross pollination of both those species of poplar. They are all over BC except on the Haida Gwaii islands. The way he described his property it sounds like he has the ideal high water table, soil and climate conditions for over-growth of Balsam Poplar.

There is a pharmaceutical market and a pulp market for Balsam Poplar but the pulp market is usually for trees bigger than what he described.

Originally Posted by miraclemant

thinking more about it, if I was a individual (not a land developer), I would NOT pay the huge amount of money to bring in a LARGE excavator to clear the large stumps, I would just leave them, let them start the slow process of decay, and wait about 2 years, then wait for a week forecast of nice weather (I know, probably August in B.C.) then take a cordless drill, and drill ½" hole all over the top of the stump, as deep as your drill bit will go. then pour in Diesel into all the holes, wait an hour or two, refill holes with diesel, and use a torch to set the stumps on fire. this will allow the diesel to soak into the stump, and get you a better burn. Good luck, hope I helped.

I think this is a good idea for big stumps - only don't wait until August to do it or you could get fined for risking ground fires. Do it in May while the ground is still damp and you can still get a burn permit, before the summer droughts and high wildfire season begins in early June.

[AnthonyF]

Thanks for all the responses. I am well aware that this will not be a cheap endeavor. However it the long run it will he cheaper that moving to a bigger piece and starting over. I cannot find anyone in the area with a cat that has a brush rake. However the excavation company who came and gave me a quote had a brush rake on their Hitachi excavator. I am thinking this is the route I will take as Ikknow how bad poplar can shoot up if the roots are not taken out or killed.

[ArmyDoc]

I can only comment on my experiences... which is based on Georgia pine, not poplar, but here's a synopsis of my "lessons learned".

1) Quick vs cheap. It's a spectrum.
- cheap and slow: Clear cut, put animals on and let stumps rot. Didn't work for me very well. Didn't have water or fences set up, so couldn't get animals on the clear cut area before they were overgrown with brush and new growth. Had planned on bush-hogging it to keep it under control until I could get fences and water in, but I discovered that the so-called flush cut stumps weren't, and they would readily tear up a bush-hog. So lesson learned: If your going to use animals, put fences up and get water in first.
- medium and medium: Clear cut and us a forestry mulcher to grind stumps down. Benefit: You can harrow and plant grass, and bush-hog safely afterwards to keep up with volunteer brush and scrub trees that quickly pop up. If you get fences up and water in cattle, sheep or goats will probably keep up with brush/scrub trees, because you end up with a decent field. Stumps are still there, will rot over time. Some are missed by the forrestry mulcher, but you can generally deal with them.
- Fast and expensive. Clear cut and hire an excavator (what I did) or a dozer with root rake), and burn the stumps. You will have a field that can be planted at the end, and there are (almost) no stumps to deal with (one or two will always be missed.) Bush-hogging is no problem, nor is harrowing and planting. Regrowth of brush / scrub trees is minimal and easily kept up with.

2) It's a heck of a lot more convenient if you live on the property. I lived 30-45 min away and made essentially no lasting progress (not for lack of trying!) until I moved out and could do a little daily/weekly even on work days.

3) Everyone is an optimist - you're probably over estimating what you can do. Take it in manageable bites. Be prepared to leave some bites on your plate to be dealt with later. I own 180 acres. I know I can't deal with that all in one bite; never thought I could. But I thought I could do 4 around the house and another 10 a bit farther back. Too much. Holding on in the back, but not really progressing. Making progress on the 4. Would be/would have made more progress on the 4 if I hadn't been spending so much effort on treading water on the back 10.
If I had it to do over, I would have done the 4 the expensive way (as I did) and then focused on fences and water without wasting time on the 10 in the back. If I had, the 4 would be fenced and cross fenced, with water lines throughout, and animals currently on it by now. Instead, only 1/4 is fenced and ready for animals, and the permanent water stations aren't quite done.

Sure has been fun though, and I expect the back 10 to go a lot faster based on what I've learned from the first 4.

Best of luck to you.