I have not been on here much because at the Christian Camp where I volunteer, we started the horse pasture project. It was cleared of wood last year with 80 cords of firewood being cut into rounds, split and stacked in 2-1/2 days! Not bad! But the stumps remained so that is what we are doing now. We wanted to rent a 850 John Deere bulldozer, but could not get it so we went with a Hitachi zx160 excavator. It is hard to see in the video but this is VERY rugged country, very steep with a lot of exposed ledge (also known as bedrock). For a week now I have pounded myself to pieces ripping stumps out of the ground. The Hitachi is a 34,000 pound machine, but I sure would not want to go with anything smaller. It gets the job done, but sometimes it takes 2 our three tries before it rips a good size stump out. So far so good though. I am getting the ground a lot smoother as I take the stumps and throw them in between the ledge so that the land contours better, and of course pulling out the boulders when I can as well. But we will have to go back with a bulldozer to do the finish shaping. We contacted a contractor who does this stuff, and his quote was $3000 per acre. For this 18 acre piece it would be $54,000!! We are confident we can get it done cheaper than that!
Just saw on craiglist a christian camp selling off alot of equipment, Komatsu pc150, a l9000 ford and a tag trailer is that close to you? Stumping is the worst work I get into by far, my problem isn't the digging with my 9000lb machine its the loading afterwords... 3k an acre aint a bad price stumping and grading
At first it doesn't sound bad, but 18 acres would be $54,000. Yikes!! Right now we are hoovering around $7,000 and got 2/3 of the stumps pulled. We managed to scrape up an experienced excavator operator so I can get out of that and get in the 700 John Deere Dozer. That will allow me to get on finish grading while the other operator digs stumps. I think things will start looking better and in better shape then.
