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Clearing Land
May 19th, 2009
Our approach to starting this project was to first identify the place where we wanted to place our house site. We visited the site frequently, observed the lay of the land and came up with a basic idea of where we could place an old mobile home to start, where our additions and out buildings could be as we add to our starter building and where our main outdoor living space would be.
My two main considerations were access. ie. identifying the path of lest resistance from the street to the house-site. and Vista, meaning a spot where several main features of the property would be visible from the home.
Then we called in the machines. This was the fastest, safest and most affordable way to create a large clearing. Check out this video to see the preliminary clearing done on the property.
A team of two cleared our area in about a day and a half. One operated the backhoe while the other wielded a chainsaw, bucking limbs and separating trees from stumps. Logs were stacked to the side while branches and stumps were placed in the middle of the cleared area for burning.
The stumps and branches were set alight and we manned the fires for about 5 days until it finally burned out. During this time, a few Mudgirls came and hand-graded the access road that had been created. Although I wasn’t able to clear the land completely by Mudgirl, It was a great hybrid effort between woman and machine.
