How many hours of machine time
your clearing will take depends on a lot of variables including the size
of the timber, the slope of the terrain and the rockiness of the ground,
but you should probably count on it taking approximately twice as long as
you expect.
If the woods you want to clear is
mostly brush: too tall to bush-hog but no marketable timber, you might
consider hiring a skid-loader with a tree-shear (see photo).
|
A tree shear mounted on
a skid-loader. |
Operators of these tend to charge
about half to two-thirds as much per
hour as a bulldozer and in some cases can save you quite a lot of money.
They also save somewhat on topsoil loss, however, operators promoting tree
shears tend to exaggerate the amount of topsoil loss that bulldozing
costs. If the ground is immediately replanted so that there isn't a
great deal of erosion, bulldozing doesn't destroy the topsoil so much as
just move it around a bit.
A tree-shear can cut off trees of
up to 8 inches of so, depending on the species. Since the tree-shear
clips the trees off about flush with the ground instead of pushing out the
roots, you need to remember that these
stumps will sucker back until you find a way to kill them.
If you're clearing the land for pasture, after
tree-shearing, you can now keep it cleared either with a bush-hog or
goats, but if you're looking for soil to garden or farm, tree-shearing
just isn't the solution you need because of the roots left behind.
GETTING RID OF THE TRASH
In the past, when land has been
cheap and money in short supply, the slash and stumps were just pushed up
into a pile and left there for the ages (stuff like this takes a very long
time to rot). You can do this too, but it's better to get rid of the brush
for a number of obvious reasons. The best way to do this, unless you
have access to some pretty large and expensive equipment like a smoke-less
combustor, or a large tub grinder, is to burn everything you can and bury
the rest.
Needless to say, burning has it's
risks. Not only do brush piles of mature trees make a very hot fire (for a
few hours) but they can smolder and hold hot coals for over a week.
A fire that looks like only so much burned coal and ashes can spread far
and fast if a wind comes up.
In other words, you need to be
prepared to keep close tabs on your fire, perhaps for five to ten days and
not completely dismiss it's potential danger until you can run your bare
hand through the ashes. I like to keep a few gallons of water close
at hand all the time I have a fire going and either a back-pack
sprayer or a gardener's watering can for application.
While it is not completely
impossible to burn tree stumps, it is very difficult, even with equipment,
and most people prefer to cut them from the trunk of the tree after
they've been felled, then bury them. Alternatively, you can haul
them to be dumped somewhere else, where they can be put to some good
uses, such as providing fish habitat at the bottom of your pond, or as
erosion control in bare hollows and ditches. I've even seen rather
attractive fences made from tree stumps, less the dirt in the root ball,
lined up so that the roots make an barrier to traffic. Of course, if
you can get the dirt out the root ball, you might as well burn them.
PREPARING THE A SEEDBED
After your bulldozing is completed
and the brush piles burned, what's left isn't very pretty. If you
had large trees pushed out, then you'll have gaping holes that can swallow
a large tractor wheel, not to mention lots of rocks, roots and ditches.
Since you're presumably going to be using this ground for a long, long
while, you need to smooth out the high and low-spots, pick up the rocks
and remove or kill all the roots that can turn into brush in a short time.
