# Clearing Brush- What do you use?



## kau (Sep 15, 2003)

The state I call hoe is on fire. A lot of it is due to uncleared brush. It leads me to ask how do you take care of you brush and with what regularity?


----------



## wjjones (May 28, 2010)

kau said:


> The state I call hoe is on fire. A lot of it is due to uncleared brush. It leads me to ask how do you take care of you brush and with what regularity?


 They say the Dr brush mower is the way to go, or similar such as Billy Goat, and then there is this mower in the link that looks really vicious.. I would say a good clearing atleast 2 times per year would be good..

Power Dog w/b Brush Cutter


----------



## Thomas (Nov 1, 2006)

I also try mowing couple times of the year,but upper northeast tad different than what you folks are dealing with.


----------



## johnrex62 (Jul 20, 2010)

My land is half open field and half woodland. I use a rotary mower to clear out small brush on both parts. The trees I leave alone and dead limbs and trees I drag out to a brush pile on the border of the woods.

I mow whenever the weeds are growing and above knee high in the field and whenever they bother me in the woods. Mostly I keep the trails clear and clear out any clearings between trees of brush and weeds. Under the canopy, the clearings grow slowly during this drought, so only once this year. I have only had to mow the field twice.


----------



## JALaswellSr (Aug 21, 2011)

I live between Kaufman, Canton and Terrell about 35 miles SE of Dallas on 3 Acres. When we moved here 10 years ago it was badly overgrown. I used a 8.5 HP DR all Terrain mower to clear the place and then a John Deere 317 to keep it mowed. The DR will cut brush to the 1.5 inches which they claim and has cut items 2 to 2.5 inches in diameter. My neighbor borrowed it to mow 5 acres overgrow with Mesquite trees and it worked well except for the tires that were punctured many times with large thorns. Three of us that are neighbors mow regularly and keep our places like the front yards of homes in town but my next door neighbor has not mowed in three years 4 of the 6 acres of his property and in the past year the front lot which is about 1.5 acres. Many of the properties are not mowed except around the house. That leads to a terrible fire danger when it is completely dry and brown as it is now. I was raised on a 287 Acre farm in Illiinois where my dad cut all of the brush with an Axe and we mowed with a Sickle type mower regularly all of the pasture land and fence rows. First using horses and mower and later with 8N Ford Tractors with Sickle Mowers. Each blade was sharpened individually on a sandstone wheel or replaced if bad.
How great Brush Hogs and DR's are.


----------



## gpick (May 19, 2010)

I am in the California Sierra foothills and we have an abundance of manzanita and deer brush, neither of which mow very well, but burn hot. Small manzanita can be handled with a brush hog. Those with a 2" or more trunk can be ripped out with a FEL if your tractor is big enough. Our main problem is the deer brush. They have dozens of very tough stems that can choke a brush hog if the bush is 3' or so tall. 

Best solution is a dozer to clear followed up with goats or brush-eating cattle like Highlanders.

I checked out a video on the Power Dog and I noticed they only demoed it cutting 2' grass. Lots of mowers will cut that. The problem I see with the Power Dog is it's deck does not tilt. That is a problem on uneven ground. For that I like the old Gravely's with the tilting deck with skids on each side. Also, I don't think those deck fingers can survive running into rocks and stumps without bending.


----------



## cj06 (Jan 13, 2011)

I have a big ole I-Beam 20' long that i drag with !


----------



## elderberry99 (Apr 5, 2011)

*clearing*

The wife and I only have 12 acres of wooded land here in the Piedmont of NC. It is a full time job keeping the underbrush cleared. We have owned this land for the past 10 years now, and every day of that 10 years we have either taken down dead wood, or pulled brush out and have disposed of it by either burning when safe (winter months), or chipping and using the mulch for landscaping.
Cleaning up the woods is not an easy task, especially for us older folks! We work very hard clearing and keeping things looking nice around here.
We have not yet gotten all 12 acres cleaned up, but are about at the halfway mark now. I guess it will take another 10 years to get to the rest. 
every time we have a bad storm or high winds, we have to go back to pick up all the dead limbs that have fallen on the ground. If a fire broke out around here, I would lose it all not matter what I did due to the huge 70 feet plus tall pines we have all over the place. We at least do our best to keep it cleaned up and trimmed the best we can.
I just purchased a new Bear Cat 5540 Chipper/Shredder that will help us out in the clean up and it is doing a great job. We have already done more in the last week that I got it then the past three or four years trying to burn. I have even gotten down to the point of running over dead brush piles with the riding lawn mower to try to eliminate some of the waste. Now the Bear Cat eats it all right up to 5" in diameter trees and limbs. Maybe we will get the job done faster now and help prevent fires in our area!


----------



## JoeT (Oct 12, 2010)

I have 4 acres. With the way the fires are now I keep it cut low. Even though I can not water and every thing is dead. I just try to keep the trees alive. Now my well is staring to suck air. I am in the process of installing a 1000 gal tank and a flow switch on the well. If this does not work I will have to pay to bring in county water.
We keep bags packed with clothes and needed papers. We just had a 30 acre fire not far from the house that took the FD 6hrs to get inder control with Hellicopters asssiting.


----------



## Cublover (Feb 20, 2011)

kau said:


> The state I call hoe is on fire. A lot of it is due to uncleared brush. It leads me to ask how do you take care of you brush and with what regularity?


 I have 7 acres surrounded by 5000 acres of 'wildlife management' area. Even though they 'say' we can't cut there, we do. The 3 1/2 acres around the house is mowed to under 5 inches, all 'dead fall' on the state land is hauled in and processed for firewood. (within danger zone of my house and shops) I have an old 1 wheel cultivator, (from the 40's with a 3' sickle bar that knocks it down, then I Cub it to death. I mow everything that is not a tree, rock or fence post!
I had some areas that were too thick to mow/use the sickle bar, so I gave the boys an old Subaru 4x4 to crush it down with. They had fun and it was low enough to mow the next time. They also used the Subaru to drag in the 'heat' for the next year.(which also cleared underbrush as the wood was dragged.) Ya gotta watch the cat/ converters on this method. I started a small fire once!


----------



## lasth (May 5, 2011)

Well boys up here in the maritimes the wife and I clean up around home a couple times a year and i use a bushog behind my tractor. Then we limb the lower branches make a pile and wait for a rain then set it on fire but not a big fire we feed it a little at a time. We do the same for the land we own around our camp, plus it keeps it tidy and lets see the deer as we have alot of apple trees around the camp. But we found the trick is wait for a rain but we also have a hot line from the DNR we have to call as they let us know what the fire index is. We also somtimes wait until winter or spring when is wet and there is know problem. 
Good Luck and have a great day.
Last,h


----------



## Cublover (Feb 20, 2011)

elderberry99 said:


> The wife and I only have 12 acres of wooded land here in the Piedmont of NC. It is a full time job keeping the underbrush cleared. We have owned this land for the past 10 years now, and every day of that 10 years we have either taken down dead wood, or pulled brush out and have disposed of it by either burning when safe (winter months), or chipping and using the mulch for landscaping.
> Cleaning up the woods is not an easy task, especially for us older folks! We work very hard clearing and keeping things looking nice around here.
> We have not yet gotten all 12 acres cleaned up, but are about at the halfway mark now. I guess it will take another 10 years to get to the rest.
> every time we have a bad storm or high winds, we have to go back to pick up all the dead limbs that have fallen on the ground. If a fire broke out around here, I would lose it all not matter what I did due to the huge 70 feet plus tall pines we have all over the place. We at least do our best to keep it cleaned up and trimmed the best we can.
> I just purchased a new Bear Cat 5540 Chipper/Shredder that will help us out in the clean up and it is doing a great job. We have already done more in the last week that I got it then the past three or four years trying to burn. I have even gotten down to the point of running over dead brush piles with the riding lawn mower to try to eliminate some of the waste. Now the Bear Cat eats it all right up to 5" in diameter trees and limbs. Maybe we will get the job done faster now and help prevent fires in our area!


I harvested all the big pines due to falling branches. Now I have quite a few hardwoods growing where the pines were. We took out 105 pines. Wild Cherry grows fast if it's not shaded and it burns hot. Now the cherrys are crowding the hickory trees and they are big enough to make firewood.
My 'plan' is to harvest any trees that may cause damage, and let the others grow. Even if I don't like a tree there, I will let it grow till it's big enough for fenceposts or firewood. 
There is a large hickory just over the fence. Since I took out the pines, I now have a 'grove' of hickory trees growing. I have also reduced the danger of fires eating my pines and ultimately, my house. Pines burn hotter and faster than any other tree in my book. There was one that actually hung over the house and rubbed all the 'mineral' off the shingles when I came there. We took a dozer and pushed it over.
This place had 5 foot high weeds blocking the view from the front window when I came there. Pushing a little at a time, we now have 3 acres to mow.


----------



## olddogg60 (Sep 19, 2011)

I have a 14 foot JD mower that I use with my JD 4520 to mow the non-irrigated land near the house. I'm going to mow it earlier in the year next year. Our neighbor to the north (1/4 mile) decided to burn the grass in his arena at the end of July and managed to set fire to the Gulley that runs through our place. The local volunteer fire department got it out before it came too close. It did take around 3 hours to knock it down. Fortunately the wind speed was low or a lot more land would have burned. As it was the fire kept flaring up over the next 12 days.

Bill



kau said:


> The state I call hoe is on fire. A lot of it is due to uncleared brush. It leads me to ask how do you take care of you brush and with what regularity?


----------



## Farmer_John (Mar 14, 2012)

where I'm at(Soledad, Ca. (near the Pinnacles)) we use caterpillar bulldozers and crawlers with drag-discs and rotary mowers in the summer, for the hard stick-like brush(chemise) and our ford 4000 with a 6' woods rotary mower on soft stuff (like sage) or grass that's too high or in the wrong spot. The reasons we do it in the summer are simple, The plants stop growing in the summer,so if you cut them they wont grow back, and that's when fire season is so if you have it all cleared before and during fire season there is a greatly reduced risk of fire on YOUR property. we also cut fire breaks on both sides of our fences to keep our fence from being to baldy burned, one fire in '08 made 6' metal t-posts droop and melted the barb-wire into non-being and what didn't melt had no galvanizing left and rusted away pretty quick.

just my .02 cents!
cheers!


----------

