New pasture

[Mountaintown Creek Ranch]

Finally got some grass.
It's very painful to build pasture out of heavy woods. This is our 2nd time.
It has taken twice as long as it should and cost twice as much.

I went up to check on it one day and there was 5 pieces of heavy equipment onsite including a D8 rolling stumps...I started guessing $ gallons of hour of diesel being used.... Felt a little sick ...I had to leave. Some things are better not to know.

I already owned the land and I thought it would make pretty pasture.
There will be a 100 x 50 corral, squeeze, load out and feed barn. Not looking forward to 10,000 foot of fence.

 

[Named'em Tamed'em]

Finally got some grass.
It's very painful to build pasture out of heavy woods. This is our 2nd time.
It has taken twice as long as it should and cost twice as much.

I went up to check on it one day and there was 5 pieces of heavy equipment onsite including a D8 rolling stumps...I started guessing $ gallons of hour of diesel being used.... Felt a little sick ...I had to leave. Some things are better not to know.

I already owned the land and I thought it would make pretty pasture.
There will be a 100 x 50 corral, squeeze, load out and feed barn. Not looking forward to 10,000 foot of fence.

Looks like it would be good deer hunting around the edges.

 

[BFE]

Looks good, what you got sewn there?

If you call it two miles of fence it might be easier to take.

 

[Ebenezer]

Finally got some grass.
It's very painful to build pasture out of heavy woods. This is our 2nd time.
It has taken twice as long as it should and cost twice as much.

I went up to check on it one day and there was 5 pieces of heavy equipment onsite including a D8 rolling stumps...I started guessing $ gallons of hour of diesel being used.... Felt a little sick ...I had to leave. Some things are better not to know.

I already owned the land and I thought it would make pretty pasture.
There will be a 100 x 50 corral, squeeze, load out and feed barn. Not looking forward to 10,000 foot of fence.

D8 is likely at 130 gallons/day.

 

[Mountaintown Creek Ranch]

Looks like it would be good deer hunting around the edges.

Incredible amount of deer. Love that new tender grass.

 

[Mountaintown Creek Ranch]

Looks good, what you got sewn there?

If you call it two miles of fence it might be easier to take.

Winter rye.
Yes it would, but then the $ per mile is staggering.

 

[BFE]

Winter rye.
Yes it would, but then the $ per mile is staggering.

Easy fix, price it by the foot.

 

[b.duke]

looks like they're doing a good job.

i'm clearing some land and fixing some previous cleared land they didn't do a good job on. running my 963c track loader, it uses around 7 gal/hr.. but it does an amazing amoun of work every hour.. so i can't complain.

 

[Mountaintown Creek Ranch]

Yes this time we use a d8 to roll the stumps out and some of them were 36" across so they were big ones.
Last time we used a trackhoe dug them up and it took a lot longer.
Thankfully in our county you're still allowed to burn the brush.
We had some pretty big fires you can barely see the d8 behind the fire.

 

[greybeard]

Looks Good!
Been there.



Just remember.. You can take the land from the forest, but the forest always wants it back and you slip for even 1 year, the forest will get it.

 

[wbvs58]

You've done a good job. I have 1st hand experience also, mine don't end up as good as yours.

What did you use to rake up the residual roots and sticks with?

Ken

 

[Mountaintown Creek Ranch]

Pretty much anything with tines, stiff landscape rake...until you get to the small stuff then a couple of people walking it making piles and a guy in a truck picking it up.

 

[greybeard]

Pretty much anything with tines, stiff landscape rake...until you get to the small stuff then a couple of people walking it making piles and a guy in a truck picking it up.

I did most of mine by separating the unburned crap from the dirt that fell off the roots or was pushed up in the pile when it was originally piled. I pretty much just spread each pile out, then re-piling with a small landscape rake behind a 2wd tractor.

Lots of it was still hot, but I learned to make a pass thru it, then head for the nearest mud hole or standing water to cool the tires off.

As the piles got smaller, I then combined some but like you, did lots of manual picking up and chunking it togehter in little piles. A pitchfork came in really handy on the smoldering stuff.

I sure had plenty of them to get rid of. and this wasn't all of them.

 

[Mountaintown Creek Ranch]

Wow that's a lot of piles of brush.

We were walking the new pasture yesterday making piles of football size rocks that are waiting for the bushog to find them.

 

[Brute 23]

Nothing like sculpting raw land

 

[greybeard]

Wow that's a lot of piles of brush.

We were walking the new pasture yesterday making piles of football size rocks that are waiting for the bushog to find them.

That's one thing I didn't have any of. Nearest rocks to my place were about 800' straight down.

 

[lavacarancher]

Finally got some grass.
It's very painful to build pasture out of heavy woods. This is our 2nd time.
It has taken twice as long as it should and cost twice as much.

I went up to check on it one day and there was 5 pieces of heavy equipment onsite including a D8 rolling stumps...I started guessing $ gallons of hour of diesel being used.... Felt a little sick ...I had to leave. Some things are better not to know.

I already owned the land and I thought it would make pretty pasture.
There will be a 100 x 50 corral, squeeze, load out and feed barn. Not looking forward to 10,000 foot of fence.

Last time I had any dozer work done it was $150/hour for a D7. The operator could make that D7 walk and talk but even with that it was an expensive operation.