Restoring a hardwood forest

[Philip Wheelock]

More than one way to skin a cat; the local conservation folks around here like mulching better than burning, as much as is practical. I work with a guy who operates an ASV PT-100 w/Fecon mulcher which makes short work of the understory. Bull briar, poison ivy, saplings, bittersweet vines - gone. Wood bigger than 4"ø is bucked into 10' lengths, and the guy switches to a grapple rake to move them to piles for burning (in season) or firewood. For owners interested in seeing and walking their land again, the results are eye-opening.

 

[madhatte]

Fecon brush heads fare poorly against stumps and rocks. If you have a lot of either, that is an expensive tool to keep running.

 

[Gologit]

Fecon brush heads fare poorly against stumps and rocks. If you have a lot of either, that is an expensive tool to keep running.

Yup. We had a guy demo one on a thinning site. It wasn't quite up to the job and the money he wanted to operate it was considerably higher than we had planned. I don't remember the model number but a 4" stick was just about all it could handle. It was a brand new rig but he spent more time fixing things than he did mulching.
I've seen the bigger mulchers working in manzanita and buck-brush but being bigger I'd imagine the price was higher too.
And if you mulched poison ivy wouldn't there be a few days afterward when that stuff could still bite? Especially if it was spread all over the site in little bits and pieces instead of being more visible?

 

[Philip Wheelock]

Where I live, every bit of land used to be farmed and the fields were cleared and the stones put into walls long ago. The guy I work with wasn't born yesterday and he doesn't run into ledge. Or stumps. Has had problems with hydraulic lines on the ASV and the undercarriage takes a beating longterm but nothing with the mulcher except routine sharpening, which is big $$$. Poison ivy? I'd rather mulch it than burn it. Poison ivy on stone walls gets the Crossbow. Anyway, a forestry loader w/mulcher is the rig that's used out here. YMMV.

 

[madhatte]

We had a Fecon head on a skid-steer here for a couple of years, and it was mostly used to mow Scots' broom at the edge of prairies, but also site prep in planting sites. There are rocks aplenty in the former, and stumps everywhere in the latter. The machine was down well more than it was up, including a job where the head had to be sent to some regional center to be rebalanced. I should also note that the skid-steer had been upgraded from a ~60hp to a 120hp engine, which had sufficient torque that it broke motor mounts fairly often, especially about the same time it was hitting stumps. The PW shop took it, claiming that our operators were to blame... and then killed it themselves doing the same work. Yeah, it's not up to this work.

 

[kyle1!]

Is there any chance that you could pasture out the wood lot with no more than say half a dozen cattle or sheep as opposed to fire?
Pasturing is a great way to reduce or eliminate the under story, making it easier to work the bush.
John

There is an outft in cenral IA that rents out goats to do this very same thing. They pen the goats in 1 to 3acres tracts and after so many months the area is very clean.

 

[Philip Wheelock]

We had a Fecon head on a skid-steer here for a couple of years, and it was mostly used to mow Scots' broom at the edge of prairies, but also site prep in planting sites. There are rocks aplenty in the former, and stumps everywhere in the latter. The machine was down well more than it was up, including a job where the head had to be sent to some regional center to be rebalanced. I should also note that the skid-steer had been upgraded from a ~60hp to a 120hp engine, which had sufficient torque that it broke motor mounts fairly often, especially about the same time it was hitting stumps. The PW shop took it, claiming that our operators were to blame... and then killed it themselves doing the same work. Yeah, it's not up to this work.

OK, so what were the solutions to get the job done in these cases, and why would anyone think it's a good idea to stuff a 120 hp motor in a chassis engineered for 60 hp? And why wouldn't the operator drive around the stumps and leave them for the excavator?

 

[madhatte]

1) there was no excavator available 2) the aft visibility was terrible because of all that engine back there 3) I don't know why they put such a big engine in there; we got it that way 4) we abandoned scarification as a site prep method altogether because it inevitably resulted in increasing broom infestations

 

[Philip Wheelock]

Thanks.

 

[Gypo Logger]

There is an outft in cenral IA that rents out goats to do this very same thing. They pen the goats in 1 to 3acres tracts and after so many months the area is very clean.

For sure. I'd like to try that here on a 15 lot I have. I was thinking a couple of pigs because they even root up the stumps and potatoes grow real well after.
Horses are the worst for pasturing unless it's short term.
John