I'm in the process of buying some land in SC. If all goes well, I'll soon have 7 acres of woods 15 miles north of Greenville. Anyone have any experience with clearing land? It's about 90% white oak, maybe 12-18" diameter, tall and straight. I want to clear a few acres, and leave the rest as a buffer. I hear that you can sell the timber, but they don't remove the stumps. What size machine (loader? dozer?) would I need to remove stumps? If i was younger, and had more free time, I'd build a log cabin out of all that timber, but I live 600 miles away, so I'm gonna have to make the most of working 'vacations' for a few years until I'm ready to move up there.

 

Cat D9

I wouldnt clear it all, maybe thin it out some...Trees take along time to grow.

 

I'd just clear enough to build a house & let the rest grow. We clear cut our land 40 yrs ago & its just getting nice again. Its mostly hardwoods about the size you have

 

i don't know jake. a D9 is kinda small for an 18 inch oak.

i think a D11 is better suited for that size tree.

 

I'll leave the bulk of it woods- just clear a couple acres in the middle for a garden and a goat pasture (REAL goats, not a Pontiac product). I'll thin the rest as I need firewood- I think the trees are too close together, and will do better with a little more room. But I do want to keep a lot of woods- less to maintain, and keep nosy neighbors from pestering me.

 

Sell the timber, use dynamite for the stumps. At least, thats what my grandad used to do. Then again, he also used dynamite when he got fed up with the gophers so maybe he just like blowing stuff up

 

When my Grandfather cleared some of the oaks from our place in the 60's he used dynamite for the stumps. He also carefully mapped out the tree locations and left as many as possible. A D9 is large but oak stumps are tough! Our D4 wouldn't budge 'em at all, it just hammers on the tractor. Dynamite is fun, but the neighbors can get somewhat irritated....

Edit: you could use Google earth to get an overhead view of the place so you can get a better idea of where you may want to thin them out.

 

You could hire somebody to bring in a stumpgrinder. It is pretty reasonable.

 

Google earth data is about 5 years old... When I used Google Earth to check on my brothers house there was an old restaurant that burned down about 5 or 6 years ago on the satelite image.

 

but 12" dia trees would have been there 5 yeears ago

 

you might be able to make a deal with a tree cutting / lumber place. give them the trees, and they gotta cut em down

 

They'll cut 'em down, but they leave the stumps. As for google earth, my lot is in one of the blurry areas- can't make out anything. Our realtor printed out an aerial photo- don't know where she got it- pulled it off the internet somehow. She was able to overlay the plat, and overlay topo lines. She had to use a password to get on the site- looked like something for realtors.

 

we are in the process of clearing land in maine, the tall pines are cut down and left in 20 foot sections to be picked up by the mill, the hardwoods, oak,maple,ash,elm ect as well as the birch are being cut for firewood and we will split it later and sell it off, the pine and firewood will be sold to help offset the cost of building!

 

Southern and Central California pics were taken in the Fall of 2004, it must vary by region.

 

i think if you want a pasture, a bulldozer will do too much damage to the land. a bull big and heavy enough to push out those big stumps is going to sink into the mud and chew everything up.

if you have to bring in topsoil and repair all the damage from these heavy machines, it's not worth using them.

it's expensive renting the bulldozers too. you need a float to deliver them to the job. you have to figure out if they can even get the machine down your access road to where you need it. and they can't do it alone either. you still need a loader and trucks to move all the rocks and soil and other crap you're gonna be digging up.

here the job sites have mountains of giant rocks, not one less than two feet on all sides. a bulldozer can't travel five feet or drop his blade two inches without hitting another one. i don't know what SC looks like, but if all you want is some open pasture i'd try and take out the trees doing as little damage as possible, and leave as much of the land undisturbed.

try renting a backhoe/loader for a day. the big john deere machines we use can pick up a tree like it's nothing. start by cutting it all down, then have your backhoe come pile up all the nice logs to sell to the mill, and dig out the stumps. once the stumps are out of the way he can use the loader end to grade the soil. he'll do a nicer job too. a backhoe can scrape off the grass and shrubs without taking a foot of topsoil with it and move around your property without destroying everything in his path.