Clearing saplings and cedars?

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Finally closed on the place and had a chance to get some pictures. A lot can be brush hogged but still going to have to get some bigger equipment to take care of the cedars and bigger gum trees. A lot of fescue grass which is good to me. Also found a lot of farm equipment in the brush, 3 hay mowers, 2 hay rakes, an old square baler that's probably no good, a 3 pt spreader, 3 pt boom pole, 3 pt hay fork, 3 pt pallet forks, several bundles of t posts, 3 rolls of barbed wire, several gates and corral panels, feed troughs, an old Allis Chalmers garden tractor in the shed and a bigger Allis Chalmers with a brush hog and front end loader also in the shed, a big drag type disk, a 6' 3 pt disk, about a 10' cultivator, and a 6' turn blade. The old man said he wanted to get a few things out of the barn when I got a path cleared to it but he never mentioned the tractors and there was nothing in the contract about removing anything after closing. I will be considerate if the tractors is what he was talking about in the shed as the only thing he mentioned wanting was what was in the shed and the tractors are all that are in there. The rest of the equipment all looks like it was unhooked where it was last used and left. I'll post some pics of the equipment as I get some area cleared to get to it better.
 
A track skid loader would fix that place up in a hurry. Brush cutter most of it then push up the big stuff. Stack and burn or pile up to rot. You would be amazed how much you could get done with just a couple of weekend rentals.
 
A track skid loader would fix that place up in a hurry. Brush cutter most of it then push up the big stuff. Stack and burn or pile up to rot. You would be amazed how much you could get done with just a couple of weekend rentals.
Do you think a skid steer would push those cedars and gum out pretty easy? I was thinking might have to have a dozer or trackhoe with a thumb.
 
From what I can tell from the pics I think a skid loader would do just fine. Pushing up 8-10" trees if you catch the ground right isn't to hard at all with a good size machine. Species and soil type do make a difference though.
 
Most efficient and cost effective way to clear saplings and neglected pasture i know of is a herd of horned scottish highlands. The will clear all the brush and saplings and thrive on it. No need to spend thousands of dollars on mechanical means and chemicals . When you can do it with little to no effort using hundreds of years of evolution. Scottishhighlands are browsers as well as grazers. They can digest and thrive where other types of cattle will struggle. They will eat all the saplings and will remove all the leaves from all the trees up as high as they can reach . They will also scrub and scrap there horns on the larger trees stripping the bark of and killing and breaking many of the smaller trees . And damaging the branches of the larger ones.
Goats will clear even better up to about 6'-and they're selling for $2.90-3/lb at the sale barn when you're done...
 
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Getting it cleaned up, the briars were so tall and thick in one are that my tractor actually got stuck, they were around 8' tall. I brush hogged what I could and rented a 20,000 lb excavator with a thumb for 48 hours to take out the bigger stuff. I've got about 15 acres of it cleared so far.
 
Place looks good. A lot of work there but sure is nice to stand back and see the results.
Thanks, it is rewarding for sure. Sometimes I think about the hours a person puts in on owning a place and livestock and wonder if it's worth it and then there are lots of moments when I realize why we do it and know it's worth it. Sometimes I vent to my wife when I'm aggravated because nothing seems to have went right that day and I ask her why I do it, she always says " what else would you be doing that you enjoy this much?" It's a love/ hate relationship sometimes, those good days make you forget the bad ones real quick.
 
I ended up with an Allis Chalmers 160 diesel, an Allis Chalmers 1948 G, both which I have got running and use the 160 to bush hog with the bush hog that was attached to it. 2 old hay rakes, one Massey and one new holland, a sickle hay mower and an old New Holland square baler, a Massey 6' disc, a Massey 6' turn blade, a boom pole, a 3 point spreader, a sickle mower that attaches to the Allis G, a 10' drag type disc that the bearings are locked up on and a 10' 3 point cultivator with a wheel kit on it and what was probably a nice disc hay mower when it was parked but the curtain rotted off and it was so rusted it fell apart, sit so long that it was burying itself and had cedars growing through it. The 2 tractors were in the 40x60 barn out of the weather but everything else was just outside all these years, I had to go through the 3 point seeder because the gears had gotten rusted and wouldn't turn. The G and 160 didn't take much to get running again. That 160 is a good tractor but cold natured as they come, I put the biggest battery on it that would fit and an inline heater, that helped but if it's cool out at all it will take it 10 minutes to start. I had no idea that any of this equipment existed until after we closed on the place, the guy said he was going to get the stuff out of the barn after closing which after discovering them I assumed was the tractors but I gave it about 6 months and he never got anything so I got them running. The place was so overgrown that I had no idea that the 40x60 barn existed and I've lived next to this place since 1999, now you can see it from the road. I keep my hay in the barn. It was set up to hold squares down the center that is about 16' wide and on each side it had hay mangers so the cows could be under the barn and eat hay. I can store 60 round rolls down the center.
 

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