Land clearing

[jedstivers]

See if you can buy a old D6C or D and a rake blade with it. Also a Rome disk to pull with the dozer. You can sell them when your done for about what you give for them.

 

[SJB]

decomposing wood eats nitrogen as it decomposes. i'd think your soil quality would benefit if you raked it all up and burned it after it was ground. then you can just spread the ashes and go from there. as long as you know the wood chips affect on the soil, i cant imaging it would hurt.

http://www.klickitatcounty.org/solidwas ... =178631264

 

[Jogeephus]

decomposing wood eats nitrogen as it decomposes. i'd think your soil quality would benefit if you raked it all up and burned it after it was ground. then you can just spread the ashes and go from there. as long as you know the wood chips affect on the soil, i cant imaging it would hurt.

http://www.klickitatcounty.org/solidwas ... =178631264

This is true but not to the extent you are suggesting. The microbes that consume the wood require nitrogen. It is always beneficial to have as much organic matter in the soil as possible even though the microbes consume nitrogen. It makes your soil much healthier, much more drought tolerant and these microbes release beneficial micro-nutrients that your plants require. So if given a choice, I'd grind everything into fine chips and have them evenly worked into the soil but that's not practical so I do as you say - push it all up and spread it later and then try and add organic matter through grazing and the planting of cover crops.

 

[TexasBred]

It's short lived however and is then returned to the soil. Organic matter on top of the soil interacts with only the very surface of the soil. It decomposes slowly at the surface without affecting available nitrogen levels down in the bed and once the organic matter has decomposed any nitrogen bound up in it is also returned to the soil.

 

[SJB]

either way you go, ground up would be better than stumps and brush everywhere!

 

[Jogeephus]

either way you go, ground up would be better than stumps and brush everywhere!

I agree. Bottom line is the cost effectiveness of getting it in production. Makes no sense in paying taxes on bushes and weeds except maybe to a liberal. In my 30 plus years of working with land I've only seen one liberal put money back into the land after taking the goodie from it. In 80% of the cases they normally ended up selling the land once they figured out that growing bushes wasn't profitable. I once asked why and was told it was for diversity. I got a chuckle out of that.

 

[SJB]

If I was rich, I might be interested in "native habitat". But I ain't!

 

[windyhill87]

40 acres had 25 to 30 year plantation on it . I sold the trees and pushed the limbs and brush into windrows to burn . 3 years later i was able to grind the stumps and brush with a fecon mulcher. I've fed Bahia hay unrolled on that ground for 4 years. It needs lime and I'm going to spray it again this year but it has a good stand of Bahia

How did the fecon mulcher do on those piles? I have a similar situation where we had land cleared and piles formed. Burned all the piles now just have a bunch of stumps left. Was 3 years long enough to wait?

 

[KB Ranch]

I've done it several times but the cost depends on how clean you want it. For grazing pasture I would expect to spend about $300/acre not including seed, lime or fertilizer. If converting to hay field it would cost $900/acre unless you work with nature rather than strong arming it. My most recent hayfield addition cost around $300/acre but I was patient and worked with nature by overseeding annuals and harrowing with an offset harrow between plantings till I had found and removed all the problems stumps. Was cutting hay in four years. Friend was impatient and he went another route and it cost him over $2000/acre and he still wasn't pleased and to this day its still a sore subject with him. I think he learned that Masonic bond is great but when it comes to business its best left at the lodge.

Is that an offset disk harrow? What advantage does that provide?

 

[KB Ranch]

We did about 5 acres a few years back. It had some decent timber on it, cut everything that was worth anything. Hired a guy with a D9 for a really cheap rate ($130 an hour), he pushed all the stumps out and piled everything. Overall not bad, got a couple dozer piles left. Ran a bog over the ground a couple times, put a little winter wheat on it the first year just for a cover crop. When it came time to feed hay I just kept feeding all over it. Fed on half of it pretty heavy then the next fall ran a bog over it again and got it in fair shape to seed. Put a temporary fence around it, then did the same to the other half the next fall. It has turned out fair, not the smoothest ground but none of mine is. I have gotten a decent stand of grass with good clover on it. Overall I think I had it figured up to be about a $1,000 and acre to clear plus me bogging, picking up small stuff, running a disc over it and seeding it.

Bog? what is that?

 

[ClodHopper37869]

I never saw it, but old buddy that worked on a SE KY strip mine told me they had a bog with 5 foot blades, took a D9 to pull.
BTW, KB Ranch, a bog harrow.