Started clearing my lot for a future home and took a few pics.

[Piston]

I started clearing a small portion of my lot for a building spot on my land in NH.  My intention is to eventually have around 2 acres mostly cleared of trees (I'll keep some), and then thin another 2 acres or so as a "transition" zone back to heavily wooded area. 

There are many "straggling" wild blueberry plants in the few places that still get a little sun, so I'm hoping by opening up the area I will start to see some more blueberry plants coming back. 

I have cleared close to an acre so far, my dad helped me a lot with the clearing.  We had intentions of bringing the 410 backhoe up there as well as my tractor, however, we haven't gotten the backhoe up there yet.  So far, it's just been the tractor since it's so much easier to transport.

I let my dad play on the tractor almost the entire time, and I was on the ground, sometimes running the chainsaw, but a lot of times just watching.  My dad has always taught me to let the machine do the work  ;) and I wasn't going to argue with him  :D


I used the grapple almost exclusively for doing the clearing.  I started out by clearing a small trail that would be big enough to get my tractor and truck back there. 

We started out by just "pushing" our way through, I tried to pick the easiest "route" to get back there.  (Note: "there" is the spot that I want to eventually build a house on)  I didn't want to take down any more trees than necessary since this won't be the permanent driveway. 

Here are some pics of our progress.

This first picture is the beginning of the 'trail' we started to make.   


We slowly worked our way into the woods...
 

 
 

 
 

 
 




The easies way we've found to clear out these "smallish" trees over the years, is to carefully start pushing the tree over with the tractor/grapple and as it starts to go over, back up, let it come to rest, then position the grapple underneath the uprooted stump, and curl/push the rest of the tree/stump out of the ground. 

You can see that most of these are very shallow rooted and came down fairly easy. 
 

 
 

 
There are a couple things we have to be really careful of when using this method.  The most obvious, is widow makers, and dead branches that can fall from the trees.  It's important to check the tops, and branches, of not only the tree you are pushing down, but also any tree nearby that may be affected.  A nice cage of some sort (FOPS I believe it's called?) would be nice to have. 

The other issue, is that my tractor is not set up for "logging" type operations.  I have to be very careful to move the debris out of the way as we go, as a limb could easily get lodged up into the underneath of the tractor.  The one good thing about this, is it forces me to clean up "as we go"  ;D

One other thing that my father has pointed out to me numerous times, is that sometimes when pushing a tree over, the rootball is much bigger than expected, and as it starts to fall, it can gain enough momentum and force to actually lift up the front of the tractor.  He had this happen on a full sized front end loader when he used to run heavy equipment back in the day.  Although it's fairly unlikely to happen with a small tractor (since I can't push over much bigger trees than you see here) it's possible and should be kept in mind. 

The box blade made quick work of smoothing out the rough trail.
 

 


 
 

 
   


 

 
 

   

 

This is the end of our "access trail" and the beginning of where we started the clearing.  As long as your expectations remain realistic, a small tractor like this with the combination of a heavy duty box blade, can get a surprising amount of work done in a day, just gotta take it little by little and have a lot of fun.  ;D

[Holmes]

Looks like you, I mean your father is having fun now.  Nice job, nice attachment... ;D 8)

[beenthere]

Do yourselves a favor and at least get some good hardhats. Might protect the noggin from the small branches and limbs that can come down.
Thanks for the pics. Looks like a fun project for you guys.

[logman81]

Nice work piston, compact tractors can be very handy for clearing land as long as you take your time and are carfull.

[thecfarm]

You have some nice ground there for NH. Not a rock in sight. I can dig just about anywheres and found at least one rock. I was just wondering why remove the stumps if not a driveway? I make new woods roads and just cut the stumps low and drive over them. When I want a new woods road I have to walk and flag it first. Takes me a few times due to rocks,uneven places and trees I want to save to get it right.Yes,the blue berries will come back and so will every other bush you can think of too. Looks like a good project.

[Dave Shepard]

Looks like a really nice piece of ground. I use the push it over and buck the stump off trick too. With a Kobelco 150 it works well on pine up to about 24", after that you have to take a swipe of two from either side with the bucket first. :D What do you have for timber on the property? Will you be able to source the material for the house right from there?

[Clean Image]

Wow!
I remember those fall days back East growing up as a kid...enough cold in the air to make your nose run but still filled with lots of sunshine!

Working your equipment on a day like that, clearing land for your house and most importantly doing it with your Dad...I just can't imagine it getting any better than that! My Dad passed away a few years back...I think every day as I progress with the building of my own home how much he would have enjoyed being a part of it and how much I would have enjoyed him being there...

Thanks for all the pics, good luck with your project and I hope you enjoy the process as much as the end result!

Duane

[Leigh Family Farm]

Nice "little" project. How much land is on the property? How far will your house be away from the road? One day, the wife and I would like to build a small mountain cabin doing the same thing your doing.

[Piston]

You have some nice ground there for NH. Not a rock in sight. I can dig just about anywheres and found at least one rock.

Your right, it does seem like there aren't many rocks in those pics  ;D
It's pretty neat how in some spots it seems there are virtually no rocks, yet others you can't even walk across without twisting an ankle.  There are specific divisions where there are, and aren't many rocks.  There are also specific divisions on each sides of the stone walls, where one side is all pines like you see in the pics, and the other side is almost all younger hardwoods.  There are certainly some old abandoned fields that I'm clearing on.  There are some large rock piles that some poor farmer went through back breaking work piling. Or at least an Ox or something.  One pile is 30' wide by 70' long and fairly low, only a few feet high or so. 

It's no coincidence that the areas I'm clearing are the ones that are free from rocks!  Well, I can't say free, I'm sure there are just plenty of them lurking below the surface just waiting for their chance of freedom and a breath of fresh air!

I was just wondering why remove the stumps if not a driveway? I make new woods roads and just cut the stumps low and drive over them.

The main intention of this initial clearing, was to clear for the house lot.  Our plan was to remove all the stumps since we'll be doing some digging for foundation and finish work.  Although this trail has nothing to do with that work, I think we just had it in our heads that pushing the trees over like this was the plan, and that's what we went with.  I also had it in my mind that I can't scarify the ground with the stumps cut at ground level, which is what I had planned for leveling out the trail.  In hindsight though, there is no reason I couldn't have left those stumps, so I have no good answer, other than because it's just plain fun!  :D

[Piston]

What do you have for timber on the property? Will you be able to source the material for the house right from there?

There isn't much timber on the property much larger than you see in these pics.  This land was logged a long time ago and never properly managed.  Once I'm able to spend more time up there, I plan to have a forester visit my property (I've already met with the county forester once) and help me come up with a management plan, hopefully I can improve my little piece of forest with their help. 

I probably won't use much of the material on the land for the house.  However, my grandmother has a nice stand of old EWP in central MA, and she has told me in the past that I can use her trees to build my house with.  As long as she is still willing to let me do that, I will use those trees for the timbers, of course, there is a chance that won't work out though, so I'm not relying on it. 

[Piston]

Clean Image,
Yes, I do have fun with my dad doing projects like this.  We work good together in these situations.  I sometimes "overthink" things and will take forever to decide on what tree to take down, which route to go, what the best method is blah blah blah, whereas he is a go getter, and will just START going to town right away, left on his own, he'd probably clear out my entire lot!  So between the two of us we meet in the middle and get a good amount of work done, but not so fast and aggresively that we ruin the forest.  I know it takes a long time for these trees to grow and I can do a lot of damage in a short amount of time, even with the small equipment I have. 

Nice "little" project. How much land is on the property? How far will your house be away from the road? One day, the wife and I would like to build a small mountain cabin doing the same thing your doing.

We own 31 acres.  My grandfather is my neighbor and he owns another 20 acres, my aunt is also a neighbor and she only has a couple acres.  If you get the lost in the woods and go the wrong way, you can be walking for a few miles without crossing a road.  However, it's not in the middle of "nowhere" either.

The house will be about 700' from the road or so, I haven't measured the straight line distance. 

[g_man]

Neat pictures. Take all you can. When we did our place we didn't have a camera. I borrowed one from work a couple times so we have only a few and they are spaced out years. I wish I had a picture story like you are making.
Your doing a nice job. Taking out the root balls allows you to make a good road. With such a nice site you might as well have a good woods road to match. Once it is there you will always use it I bet. Where are you hauling everything?  Burning, chipping, or burying it ?

[Woodchuck53]

I would check the local auctions for a little protection. I found 2 for 150.00 (state orange) and modified them to fit my two main tractors. May say a trip to the ER. Very nice place.

[Piston]

I would check the local auctions for a little protection.

That's a good idea, but how do I find out about local auctions like that?  I've tried looking online but all I really find is what's listed on tractorhouse.com which isn't really that plentiful for my area.

Neat pictures. Take all you can. When we did our place we didn't have a camera. I borrowed one from work a couple times so we have only a few and they are spaced out years. I wish I had a picture story like you are making.
Your doing a nice job. Taking out the root balls allows you to make a good road. With such a nice site you might as well have a good woods road to match. Once it is there you will always use it I bet. Where are you hauling everything?  Burning, chipping, or burying it ?

I tend to take a lot of pictures  ;D  Probably too many, but I enjoy going back and looking at them.  For the mean time I'm mostly piling them to burn this winter, however, I recently purchased a PTO chipper for the tractor and will probably chip whatever I don't get burned this winter.  I'm trying not bury anything but we'll see about the stumps.  Once I'm done clearing the building lot, I'll cut the trees down rather than push them, then grind the stumps down below the soil.  It seems to be much less 'messy' this way and I don't have to handle the stumps numerous times.  I also feel that it will help with erosion by keeping the roots in the ground until I get some sort of grass/brush/weeds growing to hold the soil together.  Hoping the blueberry bushes come back with a vengence!  ;D

[thecfarm]

Probably i would dig out stumps too if I did not get 10-20 rocks per stump.
Call on your power tomorrow. we put in a house in 2000,just about a 500 foot driveway. We knew we was putting the house in the year before,1999.I called up the power company in Feb. If we would of just called CMP in 1999 and just got a work number we would of saved $5000. In 2000 the rules changed that they would only put in one pole,than the land owner had to do the rest. before 2000 the others customers would of paid to put our power in. Story of my life. 

[Piston]

My first post was showing the pics I took while we were creating a trail to get back to the build site.  This one will start where that one leaves off.  For reference, there is a stone wall that runs up/down the hill which separates where the trail stops, and the clearing for the building site begins.  There are numerous other stone walls on the property as well.   


Prior to clearing any trees, it was really too thick for me to picture the "perfect" spot for a house, so one thing I wanted to accomplish with clearing, was to clear out a large enough area for be to get a better idea of where the best spot would be.  I had a hard time picturing where to build when all I saw was trees, and then more trees.  After opening up the site a little, it is now much more clear to me. 

Here is a view of the stone wall I mentioned, looking uphill (south).  If you turned 90° to the right, you would be looking down the trail we cleared. 

The next picture I took by turning 90° to the left.  You can see how the "trail" continues up towards where my father is on the tractor, in the background. 

We had already cleared a decent amount of trees at this point.  I do have some "before" pics, but all it shows is nothing but trees, you really can't see into them too far. 


When I took the picture below, I was standing basically where you see the dog in the picture above, looking in the same direction.  The dog is Cayman, he's a 5yr old golden who just wants to be with someone, it could be anybody, he just needs company  ;D 
 

 

The following picture was taken from pretty much the same spot (although not the same time) by just turning around.  You can see the stone wall in the background. 
This a good series of pics showing how we would push the trees over, uproot, and carry them away.  We made a large pile that will eventually be cleared around with the intention of burning it.  The pile grew pretty big pretty fast, so we'll probably light a smaller fire nearby, then feed it from this larger pile, I'd hate to light the woods on fire  :D
 

 


 


 

The old man really started having a good time when setup my Bose noise cancelling headphones with some music I knew he'd like on my Iphone.  After that, there was no stopping him, I'd look over at him once in a while and he'd literally be dancing in the seat.   :D 
 
He was a little skeptical when I bought the grapple a few years ago, as he thought it was too much money, but after getting some seat time operating it he's become a full believer.  He always says how amazed he is with how much more productive that makes the tractor.  I TOLD YA SO DAD  :D :D :D


  

   



Just as we were thinking about taking a break for some lunch, my grandfather came driving through the woods with some sandwiches a couple cold beers  8) 8) 8)  Boy that tasted good!


 


  

Back to work....
 

 

What little hardwoods there were, we (meaning I) cut them up into shorter peices to later process into firewood. 
 

  

 

With a wide enough grapple and two 'thumbs' on it, I was able to carry multiple stumps at the same time, this effectively cut my trips to the stump pile in half. 
 

 
 

  

 

 

    



It was a nice feeling to really start to feel the sun beating down on us for most of the day.   This is the first time the forest floor has seen this much sunlight in a really long time.  ;D

Once again, the grapple allowed us to make quick work of the 'log handling'.  There is now enough space cleared to be able to move around, and have room to make piles.  Once the snow starts falling we'll be able get some nice bonfires going.  ;D
 

 

 

 

It's hard for me to judge, but I estimate that we cleared close to an acre, maybe closer to ¾'s of an acre, but I'm being optimistic  :D

[Piston]

Probably i would dig out stumps too if I did not get 10-20 rocks per stump.
Call on your power tomorrow. we put in a house in 2000,just about a 500 foot driveway...

On some of the larger trees that we took down, the rootballs grew to a pretty good size, and when they went over, we certainly had some rocks to deal with, not only that, but there was quite a hole left to mess with.  In the future when I'm taking down the larger trees, I'll cut them with the chainsaw and grind the stumps just below ground level.  I think this will save a lot of backfilling the stump holes. 

Regarding power, I have talked with New Hampshire Electric Co Op a couple of times.  One thing is for sure, power will not be cheap  >:(  Especially since I want to run it underground. 

[Mooseherder]

I priced some underground wire for our cabin.
It was 1200 dollars for 500 foot of UF8-3 wire at Lowes but they were out and would of had to order it.
Buying the 500 ft spool was the same price as buying 385 feet. :
I bought 385 foot of UF10-3 wire for 375.00 from my Electrician's supply house instead.  This length only got me to the well head junction box.  I have to buy more wire from there next year to make it to the cabin.  We were are running a hundred foot of 12-2 and 400  ft of extensions from the junction box to the cabin.
The poles the Electric company put in from the road came in at 350 feet at no charge.  I'm going underground from there.  I had to cut a dozen trees for that to happen.
If they let you trench your own wire you can save a lot of money.
I tried to rent a trencher while we were there but the rental company didnt have one available so the wire had to be put away before we left.  I hope they have one available next year.

[samandothers]

Really nice work!   It is great fun to clear land when you have a purpose.  The grapple is a great tool.  I use one to clearn brush and rock.  Some times I'll use a backhoe to dig the trees out and then grapple to move them.  The box blade must be pretty good size to counter the weight of the grapple with a load.

Have fun and be safe.

[thecfarm]

Nice pictures. You will enjoy looking back at these in years to come. I could use a grapple and a backhoe. I would like to have a backhoe like what you have. One on back of my tractor would be good,but a backhoe-loader all by itself is really what I need. I have my winch on most of the time. That way I would not have to dig around on all sides of some rocks and make that much more of a mess and find that many more. I'm clearing the pasture and keep finding a dump cart of rocks that was just dumped in a pile. I know of at least 2 big piles, but there are many single dump carts loads that I keep finding.

[moosehunter]

Piston,
I may have missed it, what size is your tractor and what brand it that grapple?

mh

[Piston]

Mooseherder,
I am supposed to be meeting with the power company to come up with a "plan".   I'm hoping that they'll let me run my own cable and do all the work myself.  I figured I'd use the backhoe to dig the trench but since it will be close to 700' long or so, I think it's probably worth looking into renting a large trencher? 
They did say that the first 250' of cable is free for underground though.  It turns out that the cost of underground won't be drastically different than the cost of running wires/poles above ground.

Sam,
The box blade is a Landpride HRL 3578, it weighs 1,000lbs with the hydraulic scarifiers which is really great for ballast.  I also have the rears loaded with Rimguard which adds an additional 1,100 lbs of weight.  Quite honestly, I'm using every bit of power this tractor has.  I do feel like I could benefit from a larger tractor and plan to upgrade in the future, but that will have to wait since my tractor fund is now going into a college fund for the newborn baby boy  ;D

Cfarm,
The combo of the tractor and 410 really is a good setup.  I've maxed out the loader capacity more than once on the tractor and the backhoe has really helped.  The tractor will do probably 85% of the things I want to do, but for that 15% that it can't do, the backhoe really shines.  Not to mention, you can pick up a used 310 for only a couple thousand more than buying a new backhoe attachment for the tractor.

Piston,
I may have missed it, what size is your tractor and what brand it that grapple?
mh

The tractor is 46hp (39PTO) and the grapple is a WR LONG OBG-2 model.  I highly highly highly recommend WR Long.  Every time I've called them with a question I've talked directly to the owner, and he's always spent the time to explain things to me, never feeling like I was rushed off the phone.  People rave about WM customer service and I rave about WR Long in the same manner.  There are cheaper grapples out there but you notice it in the build quality, such as thinner steel in places, no zirc fittings in the pivot points, not sufficient bracing etc.  My grapple is: http://www.wrlonginc.com/obg2.htm
I posted some more pics of it in use in this thread (which I haven't updated in a while) https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?topic=50047.0

[Mooseherder]

That's a good deal if they won't charge for the first 250 feet.
One spool of 500 ft. should finish your run and you'll have some left over for another outbuilding if you are doing that.
It may be more cost effective to let them trench it.
When I had first talked with people in the know about getting power to the cabin, it was suggested that would cost around 15 grand because it's about a 900 ft run.
That was out of reach,  so fast forward a couple years, power company gets bought out with new philosophy and wambo my neighbor filled me in on how cheap it was for him.  The Electrician, Wire, boxes and breakers cost me a grand.  I need more wire, about 400 feet but it feel it's a bargain over hauling gas for generators.  Besides, I've worn out one generator and it needs replacing.

I may hire  a guy with a dozer to trench my line along with making some woods trails while there if a trencher isn't available.

[Piston]

Did the power company outline exactly what needs to be done for your power? 

I have to have a 'consulatation' with a planner at the power company ($250) and they will supposedly outline everything I need to do, or have done.  I'm not sure if they will let me run my own power or not though, I called and asked and all the woman could tell me was "you'll have to ask the planner when you meet with him"

So hopefully I can do the work myself, and they tell me exactly what type and size wire I will need, as well as the conduit, how many runs I need, and how to backfill.  I want to run at least one extra empty line of conduit in case for some reason I want to run another line in the future. 

[Mooseherder]

Their District supervisor drove over to the property, met with me and the electrician who was setting up my power panel and asked what I was going to need for service and sized it up.
We basically set it up for a future house.
That may happen but if it doesn't it's okay too.
It was a whole lot easier than I had thought it would be.
The lines don't need to be in conduit anymore.
The wire grade takes care of it.  Famous last words. :D
If you run conduit put a string in it to pull wire through later.