Gun Dog Forum

Our property is in the Clean & Green program, so prior to buying, I contacted the tax assessor's office, who said to send a letter of intent to clear 5 acres for horse pasture, and that 5 acres would be re-assessed from forest reserve to what will probably be agricultural reserve. Sent the letter off today.

We had a couple of trees taken down that were close to the barn & house and while they were there got a quote of $1300/day * 5-6 days to cut down and remove trees on 5 acres, so figure around $7k, and we'd still need to have someone stump grind, grade, lime & seed....not exactly in the budget right now, so we figure we'll start on it ourselves.

On a positive note, we have a wood burning stove in our basement and John is thinking about having one put in out in the pole barn (that is really his workshop and boat storage facility), so we have a good use for all that wood, although the 5 trees removed last week pretty much filled the wood shed.

Has anyone attempted this themselves? Any words of wisdom or advise (other than to pay someone else)?

No one will buy the timber?

Karen wrote: Has anyone attempted this themselves? Any words of wisdom or advise (other than to pay someone else)?

I can't believe that if you ran an add that someone wouldn't pay you for the timber. They would leave the stumps, but if it is oak or maple or another hard wood, I would think you could get people to bid on it and sell the wood. Let them cut it and clear it for you.

You don't want to stump grind. Need a dozer with a root rake after the timber is cleared.

When my husband built his house 7 years ago, his builder was adamant that no one was interested in the timber. They bulldozed it all into a pile, got a burn permit, and the first rainy day they doused it with gas and set it ablaze, then buried what was left.

That was 7 yrs ago, but only 30 miles from the new place, so we don't hold out a lot of hope of someone wanting the timber. I'll ask around a bit and I guess we could throw an ad on Craigslist.

cmc274 wrote:You don't want to stump grind. Need a dozer with a root rake after the timber is cleared.

X2 go ahead and take those stumps out. The bottoms are going to rot and eventually leave low spots or holes not to mention tearing up your disc or harrow rake.

That price seems awfully high to me. about $1300 per acre to clean up.

We cleared a couple of acres at my Dad's house several years ago. If I remember correctly he had someone come in and buy the larger trees. He made a little bit of money off those trees and paid the same crew to cut most of the trees they wouldn't buy. They pushed these up into burn piles. We cut down the remaining 2 acres with the help of some neighbors that were interested in firewood. It was a lot of work and a long term project, but not the worst thing I've ever been involved in. Good luck.

Thanks all! I have a line on a logging company that MIGHT be interested in some of the timber (an acquaintence has used them in the past).

My letter to the tax assessor's office said it would be a "multi-year project". We figure we're probably 2-3 years away from having any useable pasture. In the meantime, we have a GREAT hay supplier that also field trials

Karen:
Don't pay to have anyone cut the trees down. They should be paying you stumpage fee. $20 to $30 for fire wood. If there are good straight logs Ash, Maple, Pine, Oak, Cherry etc. You can get a per board ft price for those.

A smaller fire wood company, may work, as you have a small parcel. It does cost to get there, get set up etc.

Maybe that builder was on a time scheldue and wanted to get the trees out the fasest way. You could try to sell to a timber company and neogiate clean up as part of the deal or advertise a cut your own firewood plan where several people could cut either pay you a fee or do shares.

Last week we had 5 trees taken down that were close to the house and/or pole barn. 1 was hemlock, 3 were ash and 1 was oak. Because of the ash beetles, I beleive the transportation of Ash is pretty much prohibited anywhere outside the area though. We closed on the house after all the leaves were down, so I really couldn't tell you what else is out there.

I did get contact information for a conservationist that works with a local logging company, so I will give him a call in a few weeks, once the tax assessor's office has an opportunity to review my letter of intent.

Any way you look at it, this is going to be a HUGE project. I'll be picking up rocks for months and months once the snow melts and I can find them!

Here are a couple pics we took in late September, before we closed on the house:






We have a little over a half acre fenced off as a paddock right now. Seems crazy to keep the boys on a 1/2 acre when we have 32! We cut down probably 40 trees on that half acre.

There are companies that buy wood for chipping and use it for paper and other things that will use the small or crooked trees that can't be used for lumber. We cleared ten acres or so a few years ago but paid a neighbor that has run a bulldozer making ponds and terraces all of his life. He took down the trees, piled them, took out the stumps, and leveled the area in just a few days. Even took the top soil off and put it back when we were through. I felt the money was well spent and we were able to sell a lot of the wood by having people come in and cut their own and all we had to do was burn the brush.

Ezzy

Trees and timber are different.
No trees in the photos of value.....whole tree chipper may be an option, depending on activity in the area but...I would cut and burn.
If you cut the trees and wish to push out the stumps with a dozer and then push them into a burn pile...cut the trees high enough to leave the dozer some leverage.
If no cherry trees, i would consider leaving some for shade as opposed to the effort in removal.

Sometimes, an unexpected expense equals a thankfully unanswered prayer.

Did the same kind of thing years ago on my own property, had 5 times more trees than your pictures show(you couldn't walk 4 feet in any direction without running into a tree),all of no value other than firewood.I rented a 200 size excavator for 1700 dollars for the month and ripped an acres worth of trees out of the ground and called everyone I knew for free firewood.The excavator is Fun,the stumps are gone,and you have a way to load the logs into/onto a dump truck/trailer.My buddy's uncle could have your trees yanked from the ground and gone in 1 day for 25 dollars an hour in labor provided you had the machine.It makes a huge mess(I knocked down 500+ - 50 trees) The clearing of that acre cost me 2000 dollars from start to finish.I rented a D6 cat to grade and smooth for the weekend after all the burning was done,used my tractor to disc/smooth and reseed,pasture seed was free from my uncle the farmer.

Those trees do have firewood value. I highly doubt that a chopper operation would be interested in such small piece. Unless they have a job near by. I am pretty sure a small firewood guy would come take the job for wood or Evan pay you some. You may need to do some clean up.you also can rent a chipper. Also a track hoe will rip those stumps right out. T

Well, we got a quote for clearing & making pasture. The guy started at $48k to make it "golf course" nice or $30k'ish to remove the trees and level 4 acres of land. Obviously I can feed our horses hay for about 30 yrs for what clearing 4 acres would cost, so we opted to chip away at it ourselves instead.

Yesterday we bit the bullet and bought a tractor.



It's a leftover 2012 John Deere 3005 with front bucket & backhoe...hopefully it'll be delivered by sometime next week and we can start making a dent in the clearing (and a dozen other projects). Hubby is excited....I hope it lasts!

Wish we were closer that looks like fun

A good dozer operator can clear that all up in a few days time. Around here they go for 125 per hour, my neighbor just had 10 acres done, we burned the piles ourselves using old tires and diesel fuel. County applied new seed to keep erosion at a minumum. Gotta do my back fence line if the neighbor will agree, her trees are falling onto my property and killing my fence.

Things must be a bit more expensive here in the Northeast. I couldn't find a dozer operator interested in doing the job...and the one that was recommended wanted $30k + all the firewood.

Anyway, we have a million projects that we'd love to get around to. It made WAY more sense to buy a tractor than pay someone some crazy amount of money to knock down the trees.

Fixing our trails so we can road dogs on them is our first priority. Literally half our property is inaccessible because of brush & rocks. There are trails on both halves (with access to the far half from the road)...but you can't get from 1 side to the other without going on the road, so that needs to be remedied. We want an automatic waterer for the horses, more gates and fence posts (I see an auger in our future), a place to cross tie the horses, a round pen or riding arena with good footings, water to the pole barn and a frost free hydrant by where we park the trailer....and the list goes on!

Like I said, hubby is excited. I hope he stays that way!!

Nice tractor..it is definately going to come in handy with that land and its future management. It is also going to be a big help cleaning up during the course of your project. I sure hope you don't plan on knocking down trees or pulling stumps w/it though. You need tracks for that..go ahead..ask me how I know

A good set of forks for your tractor will be invaluable when dealing with brush and logs about 8-10 ft. long. A grapple (sp?) would be even better but not quite as versatile as the forks will come in handy for more than you can even realize.

Stumps are brutal w/out the right equipment

Have you tried to find someone with a tracked excavator, a good sized excavator can clear some trees FAST and pull the stumps at the same time. usually around 2000 per day . Im not sure how your soil is but in decent soil an excavator makes short work, and if you find the right Owner/operator shouldn't cost 30,000. We cleared 3 acres in an short day down home, with similar sized trees as in your photo.

That's a pretty small rig with a pretty hefty price tag for clearing the land. I think you'll be surprised at how long it takes to dig out each stump. However, as long as you have lots of time you'll be able to chip away at removing the stumps. I'm sure the rig will come in handy for lots of other projects.

You would be surprised how quickly you could clear that land. I've done it. Cut a spot out in the middle of the area you wish to clear. Start it on fire then just keep cutting and feeding the burn pile. It goes faster then you might think. Cut the tree's as close to the ground as you can. Once this area is just fields with stumps find a good excavating company and I bet they can clean it up in a week. Start with a small fire and build on it.Best if you can put in at least two or three days in a row at a time.
Check your local codes as I know here in NY burning is now an issue I believe.

If this is a several year project it works best to cut the stumps about 4-5 feet tall, wait about 4 years (giving the roots a chance to rot) and you can tip them over taking the stump out at the same time. The taller the stump the better the leverage.

Well, we should have a delivery date on the tractor this morning, and then I don't think I'll be able to keep hubby off of it. I'll post pics of our progress regularly

Beware of pushing stumps over with that tractor, it has cast links that hinge the bucket. My buddy has almost the same machine and he snapped those pivot links clean off on a brand new machine. excavator with a grapple on the bucket would make short work of those trees. We bucked the logs into 10ft sections and toted them away with the little deere W/forks. and the excavator buried the stumps.


the 3005 is a economy tractor so its not up to what a 10 or 20 series would be up to


Be careful if you don't have a good experience dropping trees in the woods, I have a friend and co-worker that just spent 2 months in intensive care and is now learning to walk again after a tree took an unexpected turn and crushed him......and he's been cutting trees all his life.

Post an ad on craigslist, they cut they hall. Anyone with a wood burning stove should jump at the opportunity.

I certainly appreciate your concern, but you're missing the bigger picture.

We have a 500 foot long driveway that's half gravel and off of a private gravel road (private road = no one maintains it). The driveway and road need to be plowed in the winter, we have a trail system that is truck-wide but rough as can be. It needs to be smoothed out (soil & mulch for starters) so we can ride the horses on it and road the dogs. Half our property is inaccessible from the house due to rocks and thick brush. We'd like to open up a trail through to the other half of the property. We want to put in an automatic waterer for the horses, the run-in shed could use a load of gravel dust, the paddock will need to be scraped in the spring, there are a couple of big puddles in the paddock that should be fixed, the manure pile needs to be turned, we started working on a turn-around for the trailer, but the stumps need to be dug out and the area graveled, we have an extension cord running across the lawn to the shed so that the fence charger & trough heater have a place to be plugged in, we should really put some conduit in and bury the electrical, and we have rocks everywhere! Many are too heavy to move by hand but the bucket could certainly handle them (800 lb limit on the bucket), and more fencing and livestock gates are inevitable. Our bitch yard has a corner that is nothing but rock...that should be covered in soil and seeded, and I have a 13 yr old dog in poor health. He'll need to be buried eventually.

We're not unreasonable or careless people. We'll start removing the stumps of the trees we've already cut down (a couple of dozen in the new pasture area to date...we won't worry about the 40+ we removed from the paddock before the horeses moved in), THEN we'll start removing new trees...starting small and testing to see what the tractor can handle, but if we don't have to pay someone to do all the projects above, we just may have the extra cash to have some of the larger trees removed...but I'd bet 80% of the trees where we'll be removing are 12" and under, and there's so much rock here, the root systems are pretty shallow.

And you guys are too funny!!! We have a wood burning stove. We'd like the firewood to heat our own home.

When I cleared 4 acres I had use of a small dozier, if that wouldn't have been available I would have did the same thing Karen did, however I would've went orange. Those compact tractors sure do have a way of holding their value.

I bought an orange one when we bought our place. 800' driveway..either pave it or buy blue stone & a tractor to care for it. I wanted a tractor bad : )

Now I have the tractor and want my darn driveway paved : |

I Remember thinking about that 18/20" beech stump that I had been working on for quite some time...thought I was "the man" w/my new tractor and that stump was all but out..hired a guy w/ a stump grinder 2 weeks later..lol

I cleared about 3/4 acre this past fall but left the stumps as I'll only deal w/that if we decide to clear more and make pasture. Tractor is a HUGE help but a stump tool it is not.

Fire will make ALOT of brush etc disappear and the tractor w/forks is the GOODS for that along with handling/removing logs to buck up for firewood.

Mine is 34hp

Nobody was implying you were careless, but Ive seen those links snap on those new compacts .....just trying to give you a heads up.....

I can assure you that you do not have to be a "careless" person to foul up using a tractor..there is a learning curve. You can get into trouble quick...believe that!!

http://www.fecon.com/products/view/?productid=1

These thing work on up to 6" trees, down to the ground. leave the mulch and grass over it, keep bush hogging on a regular basis and in a few short years good field. They are from $650 to $800 per week.

Bull Hog (SS)
Bull Hog (SS)

Fecon®, Inc. offers a full line of hydraulic Bull Hog® mulchers for your skid steer. These mulchers are ideal for high flow skid steers to clear brush, trees and stumps down to ground level. Quickly mulch standing trees 4-6" in diameter (depending on horsepower) and intermittently process 6-8" trees.

The Bull Hog for Skid Steers comes standard with the HDT system which includes a counter comb design (to improve material sizing), a staggered tool design (for lower resistance and increased cutting force), reinforced curved skid shoes to help reduce material build up and a uniquely designed push bar (multiple options).This HDT system also offers four different tooling options a knife tool, a single carbide, a double carbide and a stone tool.

Also, if you are cutting larger trees and have stumps that you will not be able to get out or taking to long, You can cut them to the ground and drill holes int he top dump bleach in them and dump a couple time in a month, it kills the tree and roots and will rot. quicker.

Back hoe on the tractor will help on trees, dig down on one side till roots, then push it over from the other side. Excavator will do it in a few minutes time. My cuz bought a dozer, did 20 acres sold it for what he paid for it.

markj wrote:Back hoe on the tractor will help on trees, dig down on one side till roots, then push it over from the other side. Excavator will do it in a few minutes time. My cuz bought a dozer, did 20 acres sold it for what he paid for it.

Your cousin is a smart man...would love to have a back hoe for my tractor but they are $$$$...lots of it but easily justified for an endeavor such as this. Tracks and heavy is the way to go.

Tractor arrived last Friday, the backhoe is on it's way from WV and should be here sometime this week or early next week. As soon as it arrives, the dealer will pick the tractor up, install the backhoe and return it. We have a couple dozen stumps from trees we've already cut down and cleared away that we'll work on first, and see how the tractor handles them, and we'll go from there. The plan is to only cut down the trees that we can remove the stumps for, so we'll experiment and see how bit is too big. Those that are too big can stay for now. The vast majority of our trees are pretty small....12" and under, so I think we'll be able to put a pretty good dent in the tree removal.

We looked at all those options (having someone clear for us, buying a used excavator, backhoe or bull dozer, then selling when we were done), but were in a position to purchase just 1 peice of equipment. The tractor with the front bucket and backhoe won because of it's versatility.

I'm in the process of logging about 8 acres of
Hardwood to make my horse pasture bigger.

I bought an old c60 shortbed log truck with a side
Loader to haul to the mill and log with a power saw, and skid
With a 40 hp kubota tractor.

Remember to leave a good stump to work with, if you
Cut it to low it decrease your leverage getting it out.

I have never broken souch stuff in my life, seems like I'm constantly
Welding things to keep the operation going, but I am turning a dollar on the
Wood.

Pine logs are getting 30/ton here while hardwood
Is going for 55/ton. There are a lot of pipelines being built in the area so
They are using the hardwood to make Matts which have drove stump age prices up!

Good luck and buy a welding machine!

Karen -

Just a quick thought.

The power company did some cutting at the English setter club and left lots of cut up timber. They got someone to chip a whole bunch of it and are using the chips all over the property to level out trails, fill holes and such. I wonder what it would cost to rent a commercial chipper for a day or two?

Might be worth it to have the raw material to patch up your trails.

RayG

Ray, we have a neighbor with a commercial chipper. He's been piling mulch upclose to the property line for the last couple months, and has used some of it to fix his trails. We're going to flag him down the next time we see him to see if we can use the mulch that's left over there.

We've also been looking around for a used 3 pt. chipper for the tractor. Found 1 on craigslist...hoping the guy ahead of us doesn't show up tomomrrow.

Well the tractor was returned the middle of last week with the newly installed backhoe...and it's SO COOL!!! I spent about 2 1/2 hours on it last night digging up rocks on a section of what's to be our riding and roading trails. WAY more to do, but I put a pretty good dent in this section.

The day it was returned we spent an evening digging up a section of the paddock. We're gonna have KILLER rock walls around the property, that's for sure, but hopefully I'll have a small loop to road dogs on in the next couple weeks too, and we'll work some more on the paddock this fall, and the pasture...and a pet cemetary

So many projects, and NO TIME! Oh well, the trails are something I think I can do myself a couple hours a night while John cuts trees down elsewhere.

birddog1968 wrote:Have you tried to find someone with a tracked excavator, a good sized excavator can clear some trees FAST and pull the stumps at the same time. usually around 2000 per day . Im not sure how your soil is but in decent soil an excavator makes short work, and if you find the right Owner/operator shouldn't cost 30,000. We cleared 3 acres in an short day down home, with similar sized trees as in your photo.

Ditto! I rented an excavator from a farmer down the road for $75/hour plus fuel. I ran it for about 3 hours and had a local young man wanting some practice run it for free the other 10 hours. Made quick work of some huge locust, cedar, & cottonwoord trees. Burned the piles and ran the disk over it a few times.

Good Luck!

Nitrex

Karen wrote:Last week we had 5 trees taken down that were close to the house and/or pole barn. 1 was hemlock, 3 were ash and 1 was oak. Because of the ash beetles, I beleive the transportation of Ash is pretty much prohibited anywhere outside the area though. We closed on the house after all the leaves were down, so I really couldn't tell you what else is out there.

I did get contact information for a conservationist that works with a local logging company, so I will give him a call in a few weeks, once the tax assessor's office has an opportunity to review my letter of intent.

Any way you look at it, this is going to be a HUGE project. I'll be picking up rocks for months and months once the snow melts and I can find them!

Here are a couple pics we took in late September, before we closed on the house:






We have a little over a half acre fenced off as a paddock right now. Seems crazy to keep the boys on a 1/2 acre when we have 32! We cut down probably 40 trees on that half acre.

Ohh wow its beautiful! Do you need a live in to help keep the place tidy? AKA, can i come live with you?

Update....had a logger out who said the property was selectively logged 10-15 years ago, so there isn't anything he's interested in right now. It's all small and medium sized trees for now. Maybe we'll be able to have it logged in 15-20 years...just in time for retirement.

I did find an excavator/operator who is going to clear 5 acres for us...hopefully starting in the next few days for $1500 (we're a fill-in job). We're waiting for utilities to be marked by the township in the next day or 2, then he can get started.

He's knocking trees down, stacking them up and back dragging the area to fill in the holes, leaving any trees greater than 2' in diameter. That should actually provide decent shade and keep the neighbors happy, so I'm good with that. We're going to have TONS of work to do after that to make the area safe and useable for the horses, but it'll be a start. He recommended we seed immediately to keep the weed & brush growth down while we haul out the rocks & leftover roots, so we will take his advise on that one. So far everywhere we've thrown seed on the property, it's grown like crazy, so I don't think we'll have any issues with that.

The logger asked that I have the excavator call him...he knew a guy that would pay us for firewood, as long as it was easy to get to. We'll see if that goes anywhere.

Now to find a cheap, used brush hog and york rake. What fun!