davec
ArboristSite Operative
I haven't posted on this for a stretch, so here's some updates...
There was a pause of a month or two from when we stopped cutting trees in Feb until snow melted and it dried up enough to get trucks in ~late March-April. We started pulling wood from down low, where there wasn't as much and then worked our way up the driveway, which was also light on wood. At the top of the driveway there was a ton of oak to pull out. So we worked around with the stumps in the way for a while until I decided that we needed a clear path - especially on the driveway if we were going to make 5000 trips up and down the hill.
So I needed a stump grinder! Went to rent a "small one" as there wasn't too much that needed to go (I thought). I looked at the rental and even asked the guy "does this really work?" Yah sure, you betcha. Riiiiight. Well after 15 min, i could have done more damage to the stump with my fingernails, and - seriously - that isn't much of an exaggeration... Took it back, told them to not bother renting it to anyone EVER and asked for the big one. Now that one worked. I was able to take out a lot of tire-killing small stumps and one monster 24"+ oak stump that was right in the middle. It worked but not fastest. We now had a good path to the top. That worked for a while, but then we needed to move more onto the plateau. More stumps. I took a week off work and got the tractor out there to move a lot of the crappy basswood out of the way and pile brush, plus cutting stumps. Let me tell you: There is nothing more fun than cutting stumps
At least with a 660 and 32" skip tooth.... My Gawd did I need every inch of that bar as many of the oak stumps were monsters at the base. I quickly learned to pre-quarter the big stumps before cutting them flush and to use wedges to stop the bar from pinching.
The tractor forks work OK for brush, but it depends on what you have. Loose brush? Not so good. Big piles of brush? Really good. Because you can't grab stuff like with a grapple bucket, the looser stuff just tends to fall away. I ended up piling it on the forks by hand and then hauling it to the big burn pile. Here's a pic of what we had in store after the snow melted in March from the top of the "driveway" (see the tiny truck waaay down there?):
This is more towards the plateau, same time:
Most everything is either oak or basswood. There is some small cherry and a few others like an occasional boxwood and elm, but it's mainly basswood and oak.
After the big tractor session, I rented a much larger stump grinder and spent 10 hrs one day grinding stumps. The results are in the pic below. Again the intent was to clear truck access more than making it pretty. So we cleared a lot... Here's what it looked like in May after the week off and the major tractor and stump grinder session. Pics from top of driveway.
We've made a lot of progress so far. More has been cleared since those pics. Probably about 2/3 of the usable firewood has been pulled out so far. The problem the past few weeks has been rain. The hill is impassable when it is even slightly wet, so any rain kills entry...and it has been raining a lot lately. So that last 1/3 is still there, but hopefully we can get back in to pull it out soon. We now have an old Farmi Skidding winch, thanks to CurlyCherry that should be operational this weekend, so that will help pull a few logs out of the way. We'll see how that works out soon (hopefully Sun as we have a break i the rain...). More to come, including pics of the massive firewood pile we have going already....
If you are wondering what it looked like before, just look into the woods surrounding. That is basically what the entire lot was like at the beginning.
-Dave
There was a pause of a month or two from when we stopped cutting trees in Feb until snow melted and it dried up enough to get trucks in ~late March-April. We started pulling wood from down low, where there wasn't as much and then worked our way up the driveway, which was also light on wood. At the top of the driveway there was a ton of oak to pull out. So we worked around with the stumps in the way for a while until I decided that we needed a clear path - especially on the driveway if we were going to make 5000 trips up and down the hill.
So I needed a stump grinder! Went to rent a "small one" as there wasn't too much that needed to go (I thought). I looked at the rental and even asked the guy "does this really work?" Yah sure, you betcha. Riiiiight. Well after 15 min, i could have done more damage to the stump with my fingernails, and - seriously - that isn't much of an exaggeration... Took it back, told them to not bother renting it to anyone EVER and asked for the big one. Now that one worked. I was able to take out a lot of tire-killing small stumps and one monster 24"+ oak stump that was right in the middle. It worked but not fastest. We now had a good path to the top. That worked for a while, but then we needed to move more onto the plateau. More stumps. I took a week off work and got the tractor out there to move a lot of the crappy basswood out of the way and pile brush, plus cutting stumps. Let me tell you: There is nothing more fun than cutting stumps
At least with a 660 and 32" skip tooth.... My Gawd did I need every inch of that bar as many of the oak stumps were monsters at the base. I quickly learned to pre-quarter the big stumps before cutting them flush and to use wedges to stop the bar from pinching.The tractor forks work OK for brush, but it depends on what you have. Loose brush? Not so good. Big piles of brush? Really good. Because you can't grab stuff like with a grapple bucket, the looser stuff just tends to fall away. I ended up piling it on the forks by hand and then hauling it to the big burn pile. Here's a pic of what we had in store after the snow melted in March from the top of the "driveway" (see the tiny truck waaay down there?):
This is more towards the plateau, same time:
Most everything is either oak or basswood. There is some small cherry and a few others like an occasional boxwood and elm, but it's mainly basswood and oak.
After the big tractor session, I rented a much larger stump grinder and spent 10 hrs one day grinding stumps. The results are in the pic below. Again the intent was to clear truck access more than making it pretty. So we cleared a lot... Here's what it looked like in May after the week off and the major tractor and stump grinder session. Pics from top of driveway.
We've made a lot of progress so far. More has been cleared since those pics. Probably about 2/3 of the usable firewood has been pulled out so far. The problem the past few weeks has been rain. The hill is impassable when it is even slightly wet, so any rain kills entry...and it has been raining a lot lately. So that last 1/3 is still there, but hopefully we can get back in to pull it out soon. We now have an old Farmi Skidding winch, thanks to CurlyCherry that should be operational this weekend, so that will help pull a few logs out of the way. We'll see how that works out soon (hopefully Sun as we have a break i the rain...). More to come, including pics of the massive firewood pile we have going already....
If you are wondering what it looked like before, just look into the woods surrounding. That is basically what the entire lot was like at the beginning.
-Dave
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Where are you hauling the wood to and from?
