Best way to clear unwanted trees from pasture

[suburbanfarmer]

Please tell me more about your forestry mulcher experience. An operator can buzz through a property quickly if the owner just wants to get the trees down and pay less. For sure this will leave lots of big tree chunks everywhere! It takes more time to get everything mulched well. What happened? How much acreage?

I had around 2 acres of dead ash trees and had the mulcher come in. While he did drop trees and mulch most but the stumps were still there. The mulch is really not chips but long shards that can be upto 3-4 feet long which take years to decompose. I can not till or plow since the stumps and roots are still there.

 

[Wibb]

There are a plethora of ways to skin a cat. I bought 85 acres that had been neglected for 20+ years and the previous pasture areas were overgrown with locusts, cedars, and shingle oaks along with 4'+ tall weedy garbage trees and ironwoods. I hired a good operator on a Cat 953 High Lift and it was the absolute best money I have spent on the entire place.

I don't know how dry it gets where you are, but the drier the better to clear trees. The operator would get under the root balls and pop the trees out. He was then able to pick them up and shook out everything but the roots themselves minimizing holes. Once he was done he graded the entire thing. I now have some of the most amazing stands of clover and other food plots around.

If you are handy, you can rent a D4 dozer or a high lift on your own. They should be between $1500-$2000 for a week.

 

[Ed27]

I had around 2 acres of dead ash trees and had the mulcher come in. While he did drop trees and mulch most but the stumps were still there. The mulch is really not chips but long shards that can be upto 3-4 feet long which take years to decompose. I can not till or plow since the stumps and roots are still there.

Sorry to hear that! Sounds like the person running the mulcher did a really lousy job.

 

[Ed27]

There are a plethora of ways to skin a cat. I bought 85 acres that had been neglected for 20+ years and the previous pasture areas were overgrown with locusts, cedars, and shingle oaks along with 4'+ tall weedy garbage trees and ironwoods. I hired a good operator on a Cat 953 High Lift and it was the absolute best money I have spent on the entire place.

I don't know how dry it gets where you are, but the drier the better to clear trees. The operator would get under the root balls and pop the trees out. He was then able to pick them up and shook out everything but the roots themselves minimizing holes. Once he was done he graded the entire thing. I now have some of the most amazing stands of clover and other food plots around.

If you are handy, you can rent a D4 dozer or a high lift on your own. They should be between $1500-$2000 for a week.

No truer words were ever spoken. So, how long did the contractor take to clear 85 acres and, more importantly, what did they do with all those trees? Burn them? How long did that take?

 

[jjp8182]

As soon as I saw 35 acres and Bradford Pears, my first thoughts were: buy a new place or resort to napalm.

All joking aside I just got rid of the last couple Bradford Pear trees in my yard within the last fall and burned them (along with some other brush) last Friday (7/5/19). So I'd agree that mowing will prevent new trees from growing, but it doesn't prevent the stumps of collapsed old trees from sprouting new growth, as even grinding them down 4"-6" below the surface won't prevent them from sprouting new growth. Which is why with the last couple I rented a mini-excavator and dug the stumps out after cutting the trees down. The only reason I cut them down before digging was that the larger of the two was a 40ft tall tree that also had a 40ft spread just a few few above ground level. The smaller of the two wasn't much shorter, but it didn't have even half the spread, as it'd been regrowth of a previously cut/collapsed trunk.

Given these Bradfords don't sound quite as large as the ones I was removing I suspect it'd be even faster to remove them stumps and all and just be done with them. The two I dug out (the smaller being 12+ inches in diameter at the trunk) with a rented KX040 (a 5-ton mini-excavator that came with a hydraulic thumb) took less than 4 hours for the two of them. That time includes the learning curve of how to operate the machine. So a larger machine working on smaller trees would likely make very short work of a large area. While digging them out will make a mess initially, the collapsing of the rotted rootball will also leave a depression eventually. One of the Bradfords I'd previously removed from my yard I ground down 4"-6" below grade, and it eventually collapsed another 3"-4" (again a larger tree). So in a way it becomes a question of do you want to level things once, or multiple times in a given area? Additionally, based on what I've seen even if the trees don't have thorns now, if the stumps are permitted to resprout they may resprout bearing thorns.

Just me, but I'd consider sub-dividing the pasture into sections and then just tear out everything in a given section, then level and reseed it with the desired mix of grasses. Just as food for thought, while you're a bit further north than I am, I've replanted parts of my pasture in the fall (when its gotten back down to appropriate temperatures) and had the grass sprouting within a couple weeks with the horses having grass to graze on in other parts of the same pasture. Subdividing the pasture into sections should allow you to just focus on parts of the pasture at once to get a fresh start, and potentially set things up for controlled rotational grazing.

Obviously there are a lot of different ways to approach this, but based on my experiences with Bradford Pears I'd put some serious thought to just ripping them out by the roots and being done with them ... well, unless you're wanting/needing a virtually perpetual source of fast-growing biomass (that can occasionally be pretty if they haven't hybridized and acquired thorns). As much as I've grown to dislike Bradfords I would consider planting one or two just to have a reliable source of biomass to mulch and compost.

Unless there's something unusual, odds are the removal of the cedars will almost be an afterthought compared to the nuisance the Bradfords may turn into..... however, the cedars should dry relatively quickly and make burning the Bradfords even easier.

 

[Wibb]

No truer words were ever spoken. So, how long did the contractor take to clear 85 acres and, more importantly, what did they do with all those trees? Burn them? How long did that take?

It took 5 days for 10 acres. I had him push the piles in multiple spots on the field edges for cover. The deer, turkeys, and rabbits are using them without question. With good ground contact they break down pretty quickly over time.

During that week I had him drag the teeth on the bucket through the field to break it open. I then brought in a 20' disc and turned it over and immediately planted it. Very little residual roots.

 

[Texasmark]

A dozer. Cheap when you figure what a D6-D8 can do in an hour with an experienced operator.

 

[Jstpssng]

A dozer. Cheap when you figure what a D6-D8 can do in an hour with an experienced operator.

The drawback of a dozer is that it puts your topsoil in the pile along with the stumps. That's why I went with an excavator, with the same experienced operator which you suggest. It took him 2 days to clear and pile 2 acres, and I was able to start working the soil when he was done.

 

[Overtaxed]

This is a fascinating thread, I must say, I expected there to be a clear "winner" in the discussion. Not at all. There are a lot of ways to do it, but, what surprises me most, none of them great. What comes to mind, how in the heck did people do this 100 years ago with 30,000 lb bulldozers and 500HP Fecon mulchers? I mean, most fields were cleared forever ago, right? How on earth did they do it? I guess more old growth back then maybe made it a bit easier (fewer trees to cut) but, even in an old growth forest, cutting and clearing an acre with just a chainsaw and a maul is a LOT of work. Like, a tremendous amount of work. Boggles the mind, honestly, when you see those huge plantations of the 1800's, how in the heck did those people clear that much land with a bow saw and an axe? Yes, I realized they had lots and lots of people working at it, but still.. Wow.

 

[Ed27]

Okay, how about this... Cut trees with chainsaw about one foot above ground (so stump can be seen and not accidentally run over with bush hog). Stack cut trees in burn piles with tractor grapple. Rent Bobcat E45 excavator and dig up all the stumps. Burn them too.