Land Clearing Question

If there are timber operations in your area, you might be able to find someone who could bring a Hrdro-Ax to chew up the trees. It's a brush hog on steroids.

http://65.169.182.25/blountfied/ETractor.htm


I couldn't find anyone here in the center of the U.S. We ended up hiring a bulldozer. It took me almost a year and a 55 horse tractor with a front end loader to burn and clean up the piles.

Before, 55 acres of 5 year-old second growth, with many partialy burnt huges piles

Missing is a a picture of the D-9 with CUTTER blade, which is a sharpe wide blade to cut all small and larger trees -- usually while frozen.


CAT with PLIER balde, this will let dirt fall out, same spot as above on the 55 acres


Next BREAK or first-time plow, this is how I ploughed 33 acres (not the land above -- this would be practical for a small 9 acres plot -- though LOTS of hard work,) 33 years ago, suggest hire a big tractor or CAT and big breaking plow


Disc and pick roots at least 2 times, same 55 acres



Picking roots is usually physical, especially on only 9 acres, this is me on 55 acres three years ago


First seeding to oats (then work and root pick again, then seed to nurse crop of oats or barley and hay -- we used special high yeild experimental alfalfa and red clover, with timothy. This is the same field shown above, after lots of work, getting nice, right?


Second year OATS nurse crop with first year hay, 2005 crop, same 55 acres

Enough, gotta get going.

Enjoy,

Alex

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Thou art That

Wow - aren't you lucky! Alders, birch, poplars - all the fast growing stuff around here! I had it removed by excavator and bulldozer on my property and that totally destroyed what little top soil I had. 15 years later and I am cursed with it all growing back again. Two years without horses and the pastures are growing in again like wildfire.

to play devils advocate....

mightn't it be cheaper to just buy some pastureland nearby, and keep the jungle you've got now...as jungle. I could easily see the prep costs, in money and labor exceeding the cost of the land... Doing it without a dozer? Might have been an adventure, 200 years ago, now, just miserable. It's going to be a mess no matter what you do. If you want pasture, nuke it, smooth it, and get closer to a pasture. Pulling tree roots ain't easy, even with heavy equipment, without it, hmmm..., in my case, they'd probably just stay there, if I had to remove em.

I had a pasture that got overgrown, for about 10 years, and had small pulpwood type trees growing on it. When I DID realize I needed that level ground maintained in pastureland, realized I had a major headache on my hands. I made an agreement with a neighbor to come in and bulldoze, bushhog, and disc and plow, yada yada yada, and within two years, he was cutting hay on it. Cost me nothing but usage of the land....we go on a yearly basis now... he maintains it and improves it (as his lease payment).

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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

The land we have is about 15 kilometers west of Bouctouche. Hope that gives you an idea of approximately where it is.

We want to build a couple small cottages, we were thinking either stawbale or cob, and do our best to make a living off the land. There's only the two of us.

We've had a lot of success with small scale gardening growing a variety of fruits and vegis, and have raised both ducks and chickens for eggs to eat and for pest control (although they do take their share of the greenery). Maybe a few goats, and a yearly pig raised for meat.

We'd like to do some small scale solar (and yes we know the latitude isn't optimum for solar but what the hey, we would only need a little electricity. And we thought we'd harvest roof water for our water (we already do that to a limited extent for the poultry and the garden). That's what we'd like to start with and go from there, or maybe fall flat on our faces. We'll find out in the doing if we have what it takes to break free.