Major Project!

Hello Permies!

I’ve been a long-time lurker/dreamer of rocket mass heaters and hügelkultur, and I now find myself with an amazing opportunity to bring these technologies into being.
I recently found 54 acres of land in upstate New York between Rochester and Elmira.  I had a digger up a few months ago to explore putting in a large pond, but it seems like there is bedrock or hardpan 3-5 feet down most places.  The parcel is on top of a hill around 2160 ft, 4-5 acres are meadow with full south sun, the rest is relatively diverse hardwood with lots of maple, oak, and beech, as well as a lot of quaking aspens.  It is completely off grid with an 1800 ft access road-currently no well.  

We’ve been taking down the quakes and doing some thinning of forest around the meadow over the last few months and probably have around 200-300 ~60ft trees between 1 and 2 ft in diameter.  The plan is to build as many hügelkultur mounds as we can fit in the meadow-the 7 ft high variety emphasized in Paul’s “Hugelkultur Smackdown” video.  There will also be a partially buried ~39x15 passive greenhouse in the sun-scoop of one of the mounds, featuring a large batch box RMH with pex tubing running through its exterior as well as the slab, with a water reservoir for additional heat storage.

I have little concept of what is possible in a day moving this much material and would love some guidance from anyone who has worked on a large project such as this.  My plan is to have a horse team, a tractor with a winch, and a digger with a thumb working simultaneously, and I’m hoping we can get most of the logs out of the forest and stacked in around 3 days.  I will post some drawings and photos soon-I appreciate any advice you all might have!

Thanks,
Tyler      

Your projects sounds like they are off to a great start.

I am looking forward to pictures of the progress.

Yeah, this is way bigger than anything I'll probably ever do, but I'm interested in the process you're doing; give us updates! Maybe make a video or two about it and put it on Youtube.

Sounds like an awesome project Tyler!

I have little concept of what is possible in a day moving this much material and would love some guidance from anyone who has worked on a large project such as this.  My plan is to have a horse team, a tractor with a winch, and a digger with a thumb working simultaneously, and I’m hoping we can get most of the logs out of the forest and stacked in around 3 days.  

I think this is one of those 'it depends' things. How much experience the team has will directly affect how quick and efficiently the project progresses. An experienced digger driver can achieve an incredible amount in a few hours, but an inexperienced one can also make a hell of a mess in the same time.
There are bound to be hidden issues that come up - like bed rock, or subsoil horizons, but thinking through the access so you don't build yourself into a corner is an obvious suggestion.

Thank you to everyone who replied! Trying to figure out how to reply to individual comments, but for now-
Thanks Anne and Peter! I will try to get some images together in this coming week.  Nancy- I appreciate the advice.  I’ve been back and forth between trying to rent a digger and learn the process, as I have a few friends who are somewhat experienced with heavy equipment, but you make a good point.  An experienced operator might be worth investing in.  There is also a substantial amount of road work that needs to happen, and I would really like to expand the small pond that is up there by moving and adding to the embankment.  I’m hoping to find someone interested in doing this all at once…