Clearing Woods for Apple Orchard. Advice on brush removal, Anyone do this? Looking for Advice.

First post here, and its going to be long but i will try to keep it as short as possible while still providing enough info. As the title says im looking for advice with my current plan of converting forest to apple orchard. It doesnt need to be really high producing, as i am intending it for household consumption, but given how long new trees take to produce i would like to get them in the ground if possible in the next year or two. Located in Maine, USA, zone 5a if that helps.

To start the story, over the last two years i have been working at clearing a roughly 1/2 acre section on the southern portion of my property. ~120’ north-south, 180’ east-west, with the goal of planting a small orchard for personal use (fresh eating, baking, and cider). The northern boundary of the future orchard butts up against existing field and garden, the southern end against my property line with woods on the other side. The east goes up to a small windbreak about 15’ wide, pretty much one single line of mature trees that will seperate the orchard from the road, and the west end joins up to existing field and an old tractor path accessing my back 5 acres of pine.

The entire area that is going to be in the orchard used to be field until probally 80 years ago. When i started clearing the land, it was dominated by white spruce, aspen, paper birch, and some red maple and white pine (pretty common mix for overgrown fields here). Besides the aspen pretty much everything left stumps with less than 5” diameter. All trees except for 5 or 6 have been dropped, and i am currently working on gathering what useable material there is for fence rails (my posts are all cedar) and firewood there is, and am also working on gathering up the worst of the brush into piles to eventually burn.

My main question is, how good of a job do i need to do in clearing all the brush / unuseable tops prior to planting apples. My goal is to have most brush and woody debris less than 1’ off the ground, with all brush being less than 2’ off the ground. 8 also plan to have all stumps cut as flush to the ground as possible. I have done alot of tree planting for sustainable forestry purposes through college, and that is usually how well removed brush is for the purpose, but there is a difference between planting apples and spruce. I expect most of the brush left behind would decompose to lying flat against the ground within 5-10 years, especially with our 3’ annual snowpack, and i would plan to remove more brush after planting as time goes on. I also plan to use a brush saw (think weedwacker with a metal blade), to keep the grass and other weeds trimmed to the height of the woody brush left behind until it is eventually cleared enough to get my mower in there, but that will be a ways out.

Basically, if i can access the ground where i want to plant each tree, and can get the tree planted, and protect each individual one with a tube to protect from rabbits, voles, etc, and a 6’ high hardwire cloth “enclosure” about 2’ away from the tree to protect from deer pressure, how bad would leaving the bulk of the tops and brush be (again if cleared so nothing is higher than 1-2’ off the ground”.

If the snow melts in the next few days i can also put up some pictures of how bad the brush is now where i havent started clearing it, and where it has already had the majority dragged out.

Thank you all very much.

Renting a machine, or a machine with operator can often do in a day what would take a decade to do by hand or natural decay.

Agree with Joseph.  I did 0.6 acres.  I hired a Forestry Mulcher.  Actually it was his son who did this on the weekend.  
It is a large spinning cylinder on the front of a skid steer and can completely take out trees 9 inches and smaller.  
For larger trees ask around for any wildcat loggers and trade the larger trees for stump and limb removal.