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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] clearing land cost?

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  • From: Willie McKemie <mf AT austinfarm.org>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] clearing land cost?
  • Date: Sun, 9 May 2010 11:30:39 -0500

On Sun, May 09, 2010 at 09:22:30AM -0400, frank ventura wrote:
> I for one vote to keep the discussion here and suspect some others might
> agree. Prime tillable land is hard to come and I have considered purchasing
> forest land to clear, but don?t know the first thing about the costs to do
> so
> either.

I've had patches of land, 5 to 20 acres at a time, cleared in the past
30 years. We live in the "Post Oak Savannah" where native trees are
Post Oak, Blackjack Oak, Cedar Elm, some Hickory, just a few Live Oak,
and Cedar, aka Juniper. I paid mostly about $1000/acre with about
$60/hour for D8 time. I imagine cost is more like $1500/acre now.

Aside from pushing with the front blade, the dozer can pull three big
implements:
1) root plow
2) rake
3) disk
To do the best job possible, the trees are pushed in to piles and then
burned after a few weeks. Then, the above implements are used in
order. Lots of hand picking up and burning in small piles is needed
and the dozer operator typically does not contract to perform those
tasks. Even after the dozer has pulled the big disk, there will be a
lot of smoothing for the land owner to do with a small disk.

The cheapest path is for the dozer to only push trees in piles
positioned where they can be allowed to rot and/or provide habitat.
The owner is then left with a lot of smoothing and clean-up work.

In this area, the root plow and rake are useful mainly for controlling
mesquite. Mesquite is present mostly in areas that have been cleared
for many years and not maintained.

--
Willie, ONWARD! Through the fog!
http://counter.li.org Linux registered user #228836 since 1995
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