Please post your experiece with clearing Trees from a land lot!!

[Bec]

Dh and I are looking at a house on 7 acres. Beautiful house, needs some TLC, but it is perfect. The land is lightly wooded, mostly brush with some large trees, medium trees and smaller trees. We were thinking about clearing about 5 acres of it for horse pasture. The amount of woods around the property is unreal...I have never seen that much woods in one area.

What is the cost of clearing?

Have you done it yourself?

Have you hired someone?



Any input is appreciated!

 

[lockedhearts]

Quote:
Alot of times you can get them to clear for free if you let them have the lumber, it all depends on the lumber industry in your area. We had 6 acres cleared years ago, unfortunately we did not count on the mess that was left behind. I got it cleared for free but I should have been smarter and asked that they clean up since they made thousands on the lumber.

I would try to get 2 or 3 people to look at it and see who is willing to do the best job for you, also get everything in writing.

 

[Bec]

Thank you for your response!

How is the land that you had cleared? Is it decent land? Were there lots of stumps? Was it hard to grow grass in the cleared area?

 

[lockedhearts]

Quote:
Yes due to our own stupidity, they left the stumps. If I had it to do over again, I would either get them to pay me for the trees, or give them the trees for them to clean up and clear stumps. Luckily my father is retired and a good friend of mine who lives a few miles away, bought a backhoe, so hopefully this spring, Daddy can come up and take care of the mess and stumps for me.

 

[Marlinchaser]

I would guess that the land will be sandy.

 

[Mahonri]

Clearing trees from land.

I got a compound fracture of my left leg doing that. June 1983.

Wish we would have rented a large Cat and hauled them away that way.

 

[ranchhand]

Bec, we didn't do it but the previous owners had all the softwood trees (pines) removed and the hardwoods (oaks) left. They made an even trade with a logging company, which took the stumps to ground level.

Sounds like a great place for you all!

 

[Crazyland]

We are working our own property slowly... left me with a goose egg last time I was out there. But all we are doing really is getting rid of all the little trees, 8 inches max, and underbrush. We want to leave the big old trees. Very time consuming but I love to see the progress we are making and we are in no hurry. Plus all of these bon fires are great even in the cold weather. Smores anyone?

 

[kbarrett]

This post brought a flashback for me....of how not to do it. I worked at an eventing/ hunter barn in my late teens. The lady who owned the place wanted some of the wooded area of a pasture cleared. Her fiancee decided to take on the project because it would be "good exercise", he was a city born college prof. who showed up a few times a year to get dirty and become one with nature

So he would take his axe, his portable radio blaring classical music, and unfortunately his shirt off and head out into the gelding pasture and chop down trees. The scary part (other than his being shirtless

) was he cut down mostly 3" - 6" young trees by cutting them down but leaving 2-3' sticking out of the ground. He had planned on removing his tall stumps after he was done chopping. This was a field where 9 geldings lived 24/7 , they were all relatively young and it was common for them to rough house and tear around the pasture. I always envisioned one of them wiping out in the mud and becoming impaled. I voiced my concerns, they were ignored because she was happy to have him around the farm so much (they lived off the farm). I lost a bunch of respect for her over that and finally lost all respect a couple of months later when she was selling one of her personal horses and I heard her tell them he never colicked when he had at least 4 mild bouts of it the first which was my 2nd day working there.
Anyway, since you're specifically clearing for a horse pasture, whoever you use make sure they're not leaving hazards for your horses.

 

[halo]

Purchased a small farm that was all wooded in NJ. Big huge mistake. Will never ever do it again. Theres way too much land available already cleared, that you can use immediately. If you clear, besides the huge cost and time involved, you then have to plant it if you want it for live stock, so you've lost another year in waiting for the grass to grow and fill in.

Never again.