Best way to clear unwanted trees from pasture

[bazman82]

This probably wont work for large areas or if your short on time but I've cleared some trees in my area of the pasture to square them off by cutting them down then digging the stumps out and burying them. I have access to an older backhoe that is big enough to dig some decent holes to bury the stumps. The stumps (3' diameter for most) themselves took a bit to get them dug out as I had to dig around to break the roots then I would just slide it into the hole I dug next to it. It was a time consuming process but it worked for our setup.

 

[EddieWalker]

If you are going to dig the stumps up anyway, why not just dig up the entire tree at the same time? When you cut the tree and leave a stump, it's very hard to dig out the stump because you are fighting the roots the entire time. When you take out the entire tree, the height of the tree works as leverage to break free of the roots and it's a lot faster and easier to just dig down a little on each side, then push the tree over.

On Sunday, I spent an hour digging up a stump from a 18 inch pine that had snapped off during a storm over the winter using my full sized backhoe. After that, I took out about 100 trees in 4 hours ranging in size from 4 inches up to just over a foot thick. While none of them where as big as the broken off stump, all of them came out super easy because I just had to break through a few roots on the bigger trees to push them over, and the smaller trees just came out with a push.

 

[Ed27]

If you are going to dig the stumps up anyway, why not just dig up the entire tree at the same time? When you cut the tree and leave a stump, it's very hard to dig out the stump because you are fighting the roots the entire time. When you take out the entire tree, the height of the tree works as leverage to break free of the roots and it's a lot faster and easier to just dig down a little on each side, then push the tree over.

On Sunday, I spent an hour digging up a stump from a 18 inch pine that had snapped off during a storm over the winter using my full sized backhoe. After that, I took out about 100 trees in 4 hours ranging in size from 4 inches up to just over a foot thick. While none of them where as big as the broken off stump, all of them came out super easy because I just had to break through a few roots on the bigger trees to push them over, and the smaller trees just came out with a push.

I thought I would cut trees with chainsaw first and stack them because it would disturb tree the least. These Bradford pear trees have thorns that are guaranteed to puncture tractor tires. The I come back with rented excavator to dig out stumps. However, you have a great point about using tree as leverage to help get stump out. So, it seems like the way to go would be to rent a Bobcat E45 mini excavator with a thumb on the bucket. Dig out each tree and stack into multiple piles small enough to burn. This will take a long time since I have a ridiculous number of trees. I can rent an E45 for about $1100 per week, or an E35 for about 900 per week.

 

[EddieWalker]

I would look into renting a much larger machine. If you can get one that us twice as powerful, I think it will be less then twice as much money, and I know you will get 4 times as much work done. My neighbor hired a 45 tonne excavator to clear his land because it could pull a stump a minute. This was about 60 acres of 12 inch pines that he had logged for chips. He did the math and figure it was half the cost to hire such a large machine because it was able to get so much more done. Instead of fighting the roots, battling hard soil, get something that just slices through the ground.

 

[bcp]

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.

I posted some pictures of the old methods.

https://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/photos/414736-stump-removal-good-old-days.html

Bruce

 

[calpalmer]

At least for our common native trees in the PNW, I don't think a dozer pushing the stumps is very practical. The stumps don't push well, without subsurface breaking of many, many roots (depending on age). I think a small to medium excavator nibbling at those roots without excavating excess soil is the way to go. There's a video floating around of even using a 100hp tractor and it's backhoe attachment - it isn't terrible, but it is time consuming.

Sell the horses -- I'm going to look into that myself!

Cal

 

[searcyfarms]

i got rid of my horses/money pits ;-) u wont find a better way than a large excavator/dozer and someone else doing the work. I have thought about the mulcher method, go back over it with fertilizer and let it grow up and then burn it the next yr, i bet it would burn 90% of that mulch up with a hot fire

 

[Tennsawdust]

I thought I would cut trees with chainsaw first and stack them because it would disturb tree the least. These Bradford pear trees have thorns that are guaranteed to puncture tractor tires. The I come back with rented excavator to dig out stumps. However, you have a great point about using tree as leverage to help get stump out. So, it seems like the way to go would be to rent a Bobcat E45 mini excavator with a thumb on the bucket. Dig out each tree and stack into multiple piles small enough to burn. This will take a long time since I have a ridiculous number of trees. I can rent an E45 for about $1100 per week, or an E35 for about 900 per week.

I've done it three ways. On one we had mostly cedars with a few black locust mixed in so we cut some, brush hogged most and pulled some with a tractor and log chain. The largest trees we cut off at the ground and worked around it. Chopping the cedars leaves some sharp stumps sticking up so we ended up going over it with a set of rippers to pull out whatever roots, etc.. we could. Not the ideal method, but it was what we could do with the equipment on hand. On another job I had a guy come in with a track loader that had a 4 way bucket on it. That one had a mix of trees up to 12" on it, mostly maple and oak. He was able to push the trees over and use the bucket to stack them for burning. He cleared somewhere between 1 1/2 and 2 acres a day depending on how dense it was. I've also cleared one using a 55 hp tractor with a root grapple. That one was mostly cedars and smaller brush and saplings. There were some 4-5" maples in it too. I found that if I could get the teeth of the grapple worked under the roots the trees would pop out of the ground and then I could grab them by the root ball and push them where I wanted them. We also burned all of that. You should probably mow what you can so you have a good idea what you are up against and then I think you are going to need some heavy metal to make any real progress on that much acreage.

You are probably going to want to burn a lot of the trees. Grinding up any large amount is going to take forever unless you get an industrial sized grinder.

Final suggestion is that when you get it all cleaned up plan on spraying all of it with something like Crossbow or a similar field clear treatment at least once after things get a chance to sprout back up. A boom sprayer isn't that expensive to buy or build and you will need it if you want to have clean pasture or hayfields.

 

[jjp8182]

It might be worth starting with the larger of the two Bobcat mini-excavators to get a feel for using one to remove trees. However, given the area that needs to be cleared I'd second looking at renting a larger excavator as the rental prices generally start flattening out as the size of the machine increases, even though productivity of the larger machines can be much better (especially if there's room to operate).

The biggest reason I went with a 5-ton machine was that's the size range I've considered as a potential future purchase. If I were clearing a larger area I'd look at renting a full sized excavator to make shorter/quicker, more cost effective progress. Getting one with with a thumb it should be possible to build a pile that can then be hauled with a tractor/grapple to a single burn spot. Of course, with the thumb (preferably a hydraulic one for more flexible use) it should also be possible to lift and drop the rootball/tree to knock a fair amount of dirt/soil off.

Just for the sake of providing a data point, this tree: 18 months later left this stump ...which was the larger of the two Bradfords I removed. At the time I cut it down (the fall of the year after the spring the picture of the tree was taken - or roughly 20 months later) the limbs were touching the fence line. Taking this particular stump out took probably 1-2 hours -- that's a rough guestimate I wasn't paying much attention to time as I was having fun learning how to operate the machine (was a first time user), and figuring out the most efficient way to do what I was trying to do since the removal of the two Bradfords was the practice for removal of a ~21" diameter pin oak.

Trees smaller than these should be easier and quicker as at some point in the small tree vs. large machine equation there's a point at which the force the machine can generate should just be able to pop the tree/stump out ... much like a shovel or mattock on a small sapling. Which is where clearing a large area becomes relatively easy & straight forward.

The other nice about using an excavator for this sort of work is that it minimizes the disturbance of the top soil to get the tree out, and if digging turns out to be necessary the topsoil can be put in one pile, and all the other dirt in another pile. Which in turn permits scooping the dirt back into the hole and putting the top soil back on top.

(It might just be me, but after a while working with the excavator I found that it was actually easier/faster to use the bucket to back fill a hole than it was to use the blade on the mini-ex to do so ...took a bit of coordination to do so cleanly, but after getting used to it, iI found it to be the preferable method of moving dirt).

 

[searcyfarms]

It might be worth starting with the larger of the two Bobcat mini-excavators to get a feel for using one to remove trees. However, given the area that needs to be cleared I'd second looking at renting a larger excavator as the rental prices generally start flattening out as the size of the machine increases, even though productivity of the larger machines can be much better (especially if there's room to operate).

The biggest reason I went with a 5-ton machine was that's the size range I've considered as a potential future purchase. If I were clearing a larger area I'd look at renting a full sized excavator to make shorter/quicker, more cost effective progress. Getting one with with a thumb it should be possible to build a pile that can then be hauled with a tractor/grapple to a single burn spot. Of course, with the thumb (preferably a hydraulic one for more flexible use) it should also be possible to lift and drop the rootball/tree to knock a fair amount of dirt/soil off.

Just for the sake of providing a data point, this tree: View attachment 612197 18 months later left this stump View attachment 612196 ...which was the larger of the two Bradfords I removed. At the time I cut it down (the fall of the year after the spring the picture of the tree was taken - or roughly 20 months later) the limbs were touching the fence line. Taking this particular stump out took probably 1-2 hours -- that's a rough guestimate I wasn't paying much attention to time as I was having fun learning how to operate the machine (was a first time user), and figuring out the most efficient way to do what I was trying to do since the removal of the two Bradfords was the practice for removal of a ~21" diameter pin oak.

Trees smaller than these should be easier and quicker as at some point in the small tree vs. large machine equation there's a point at which the force the machine can generate should just be able to pop the tree/stump out ... much like a shovel or mattock on a small sapling. Which is where clearing a large area becomes relatively easy & straight forward.

The other nice about using an excavator for this sort of work is that it minimizes the disturbance of the top soil to get the tree out, and if digging turns out to be necessary the topsoil can be put in one pile, and all the other dirt in another pile. Which in turn permits scooping the dirt back into the hole and putting the top soil back on top.

(It might just be me, but after a while working with the excavator I found that it was actually easier/faster to use the bucket to back fill a hole than it was to use the blade on the mini-ex to do so ...took a bit of coordination to do so cleanly, but after getting used to it, iI found it to be the preferable method of moving dirt).

agreed, when i say excavator i mean TRACK HOE - like 50K lbs of machine not some rinky dink 10K lb machine - i have run those for back yard work but im talking something substantial - that is what they guy used that did my acreage for me - i can run one about half as well as a full time operation so i didnt want to waste time or frustration i just let the professional do it.

the last one i rented for a week was for removing a burned log home ( my neighbor ) and it was 56K lbs and not much could stop it - the teeth are all you need for scraping things up around and leveling things like stated here above - when you get efficient its like an extension of your own hand - i call it true artistry watching the good operators - if time is not of the essence and your wife/daughter can tolerate you puttering around for 10 years go for it otherwise hire it out