Wanted: Advice for clearing 35 acres of dead cherry trees while protecting the topsoil

Hello All:
Hoping that I might gather some ideas on the best way to cut down and clear roughly 35-40 acres of dead cherry orchard. My husband and I are considering buying a piece of property that we would love to farm, but we don't know how much time/money we should set aside for turning most of the property that is now dead orchard into tillable or livestock land. We would rather not slash and burn, but what is feasible? Am I crazy to think of burying the stumps after they are pulled and turning them into hugels? I'm imagining a pile that would take up several acres and be a hundred feet high.  

Wish we were younger, we are just young enough to think we can still homestead, but really old enough to know better!

Any ideas and comments would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!!

Welcome to Permies, Liz!

1. A little info as to the ecosystem you're talking about would help - dry, rainy, temps, soil type, rocky - that sort of thing.

2. Do you have some idea of why all those trees died?

3. Is this a traditional orchard with full-sized standing trees (which would be the norm for cherries) or are there a bunch of posts to contend with?

4. Are you prepared to only tackle portions of it at a time, and use different techniques depending on the permaculture zone?

For example, I could see that for the further out zones, sticking tree seeds of various compatible varieties in rows on contour ignoring the dead trees and let them be standing for the birds and to gradually fall and feed the soil. In my ecosystem, standing and fallen dead trees become "nurse logs" to start new trees on. In some dry ecosystems, that dead wood would be dry for decades from what I've been told, so it's hard to suggest an approach.

Thanks so much Jay for responding so quickly.
1. We are in Northern Michigan, what was once wonderful Cherry country, but now the seasons are so screwy that...well I'm sure you know the fate of most of the fruit farmers here.
2. I believe that the trees died due to neglect and also it is very old orchard.
3. Yes, full size, maybe 10-12 feet?
4. In terms of time, ideally we would rather solve this more quickly - but wondering if 10 acres a year is still too monumental a task for the likes of us!

Thanks again!

The trees died to neglect? That sounds a bit strange unless you are somewhere where they need constant water. To get rid of them with minimal disturbance I would cut them down and cut them up to sell for firewood, Or if they are large cherries in good condition you might find crafters/smokers would be interested. all smaller bits could be burnt, then rent a stump grinder to remove the stumps.

If I were considering buying a similar property, I would decide what I wanted to do with the property.

If I were planning to build a house I would remove enough trees to make my Zone one, my living area.

Trees that are 10-12 feet tall are expensive to have removed unless a person knows how to chop down trees or wants to learn.

If I hired a contractor to build the house most likely the contractor would have the trees bulldozed so they are out of the contractor's way.

Then if I planned to have animals, I would probably just leave the other trees alone.  Cattle and goats would be happy to graze the area, even with the trees there.

Hi Liz, welcome to Permies!

If you have a little money to rent a machine and several days to burn operating it, my suggestion is a skid steer shredder. It may have a more technical name, but I don't know what it is. These things make rapid work of shredding small trees (it's what they're designed for) and turning them into a mix of sawdust and wood chips which will have numerous benefits to the soil below as mushroom and other fungi decay the wood which will happen in a few short years. The one important thing to note is making sure the skid steer has tracks and not wheels as this will have minimal impact on the soil. I believe this could be the quickest and easiest route to clear this dead orchard. Hope this helps!

Hello,

James beat me to the punch, and I agree that a skid steer shredder will make quick work of those cherry trees.  I still think it will take a bit of time, so even 5-10 acres will probably keep you busy, but to get rid of old trees QUICKLY, the shredder is the best option.

Unfortunately it will reduce the trees to almost nothing—no firewood, no hugel logs, and no wood chips (my favorite part) except for what you might be able to scrape off the ground.

Maybe clear a small area quickly with the shredder and make more productive use of all those trees over time?  Just a suggestion so of course use your own judgment.

I can think of a lot of uses for all those trees if you were so inclined!

Eric

I was going to refer Liz to this thread though the title says "while protecting the topsoil":

https://permies.com/t/169631/land-young-trees#1331629

To me, this procedure might possibly disturb the topsoil.

Clearing 30+ acres of trees is going to be a massive project, so my advice would be to think about buying some heavy equipment. A grinder on a skidsteer is an interesting idea, but you better do your research so you dont wind up with a machine that wont do the job you thought it would (or that the salesperson claims it will do). Personally, I am a convert to the school of thought that "everybody needs a mini-excavator!" An excavator is rarely the fastest machine, unless you are digging a giant pit, but it is often the most versatile. They can also mount grinders, flails, and all sorts of other attachments in place of the bucket if you decide that grinding is the way to go. You will later find a million uses for an excavator, like making roads, digging trenches, digging ponds, making swales and so on.

For the actual job, I would suggest you work during dry weather or possibly in the winter if your ground freezes. That should minimize the impact on the soil. You might be able to find people who will come haul away wood for firewood, but if the trees are only 12 feet tall, it will likely be pretty marginal material. With an excavator you can make brush piles without a bunch of dirt in them, so they will burn cleanly. You could even dig a trench and burn slash inside to make a giant quantity of biochar. Just let it burn down, then push the dirt back on top. Instant carbon sequestration. Letting it sit out for a summer will do wonders for reducing the smoke, although if it is standing dead wood it might already be pretty dry. Even a small excavator can grub out pretty big stumps once you get a hang of it. 6-8" stumps can be dug out minutes, but bigger stuff will take more doing. As for cost, a new 4 ton machine would run 30-40k. Buying one with a few thousand hours would save you 10-15k, and should still give you a nice long time before it was in need of any sort of major service. They are amazingly robust, and really do not require frequent servicing. Its a nice size of machine in my opinion, because you can move them with a decent sized pickup truck.

If you dont feel like taking it on yourself, there are likely outfits that would come out and just bulldoze the trees, but I suspect it would make a real mess. Bulldozers mix a bunch of dirt into whatever they are pushing, so I suppose if you wanted to bury the wood, you could just have them make big windrows along the contour.

Anyway, I will be curious to see the place if you end up taking it on, so do post some pictures!

First I would find out why the trees died.  Was it simply old age or ?  
Cherry can have value.  Some wood workers and folks who are into smoking food may really want that wood.  I would explore the possibility of letting them harvest at least some of the trees for free or a minimal cost.  OF course give them a deadline so you are not left hanging waiting for them to get out there but it could be one way of using them as a resource.  Be sure and keep some for yourself to store and use for smoking later.  Or for some of the round wood carving and building badges in the SKIP program.  Look at them as an opportunity not something that has to be removed immediately.

Mark off your zone 1/house area and yes go ahead and allow those to be bulldozed if needed.  Those trees can be used to make a slash pile hugel so before you start let them know where you want that slash pile to be. Make sure the builders know you want to that pile to be only dead trees and other vegetation and dirt from your area.  Put all other building material etc in another area.  BE SURE you talk this over with your contractor get it in writing that he is aware of the reasons for the different piles.  Trust me always get things in writing even if that is your brother and make sure it is signed and dated by both of you.  

For the rest of the orchard once the house and access is built now is the time to stop take a breath and just watch the rest of the property for a year or so.  Watch where you need water control where leaving a few dead snags would help your land etc.  This year is learning the land then afterwards slowly working towards the vision you developed.  Maybe hogs or cattle would like having some of the trees left for scratching posts.  Maybe they can become vine supports for part of a food forest.  
Remember cherry can be used for firewood to heat or cook with.

If the trees are only ten - twelve feet tall then I wouldn't expect even the trunks to be very large. Maybe some firewood could be claimed but I doubt much in the way of lumber. Also at that size they shouldn't last a very long time just left to the forcers of nature.

I personally would not purchase such a project but If I happened into it I might just leave them be to a large degree and begin planting and utilizing the land between and around them in other ways. I'm guessing they are in rows, with space to maneuver between? If so I might just cut any branches leaning toward the open space and pile them up between and around the trunks, eventually cutting the trunks down too and just adding that to the piles and letting it all rot. Shouldn't be too many years until the piles could be utilized for crop production or if desired removed. After rotting or composting for a few years they will be much lighter, softer and no longer firmly attached to the ground. I'm envisioning parallel rows of clear ground that used to be the access routes alternating with rows of rotting wood with the latter eventually becoming something along the lines of the hugel mounds folks talk about.

Unless I was in a big hurry for some reason I see no need at all for much equipment other than maybe a chain saw. Also again, unless I was in a hurry I see little need for burning all that great organic matter which will soon enough become soil on it's own.

Mark Reed wrote:

Unless I was in a big hurry for some reason I see no need at all for much equipment other than maybe a chain saw.

Hubby recently bought a battery chainsaw pole pruner. For fruit trees it might be really useful, as fruit trees will have been encouraged to grow "out" rather than "up". Being able to remove branches sticking out while standing on the ground could be useful.

Turning much of this into hugels seems like a good plan for at least parts of the property. However, I also agree with Dorothy Pohorelow's suggestion of watching the land for a year and just working on Zone 1 while doing so. You may decide to rewild parts of the  land, in which case just pushing in lots of tree seeds and understory seeds around the dead trees will be all that's needed and save a lot of work in the short term. If you do decide to run animals, even dead branches give some shade.

As many have suggested, you need to decide if the dead trees are a resource or a problem. Permies are great at finding "the problem is the solution" responses!

I'd try to guess at a realistic plan, of what you want, when, and how much you can take on, year by year. It might not need to happen day one.  
Clearing it all out first thing, will take a lot of time or be expensive (maybe both), and you have to decide what to do with all that wood, right then.
The longer you wait, the easier the job may be, as the roots decay... The more firewood you can use up, winter heat, summer firepit, give away, or sell.

Maybe, since they are an orchard, and in rows? The trunks could be fence posts, already installed, to begin with your livestock. There's a few hundred to not pull up today.

Dorothy Pohorelow wrote:Cherry can have value.  Some wood workers and folks who are into smoking food may really want that wood.  

I love working with cherry - it's a beautiful wood. If I had to only ever work with one species, it would be cherry. The iridescent red which turns to deep brown is amazing.

Dead standing cherry will already be pretty dry so you wouldn't have to dry it for long to make it even more valuable to woodworkers. And we love our air dried lumber too. It works so much easier.

I'm wondering if the orchard owners topped the trees to stop them growing too tall, but allowing the trunks to grow wider - it's something you should really consider. When looking at the value of the wood, remember that the sap wood in an 8" wide tree will take up maybe 2" of the width. So the widest 8" board will only have 6" of useable wood in it. The sap wood tends to be very white and compared to the rest of the trunk is pretty much unusable for anything on show.

Just something to consider before you go chipping it.

To All the Dear Folks that Advised:
I am simply overwhelmed with all your thoughtful suggestions! Thank you so much!

I am going to do some more research regarding the history of the orchard. So far, no information from the seller. I don't know much if anything about cherry trees, I assumed they were a short lived, prodigious hybrid.

Thank you for the information on the machinery! I like the idea of shredding some of the trees, turning some into hugels, and the backhoe excavator. The backhoe was an option that we are most drawn to as we could use it to dig our foundation and septic. Loved the idea of turning some of the trees into fenceposts. Brilliant!

Definitely want to wait and watch a year. Very curious to see if there are any wet areas in the spring.

I have fallen in love with this piece of property. If we do end up purchasing it, I will take pictures and record the progress.

Thanks again! So glad to have found this!

I bought an older backhoe a while back and I use it to routinely dig around tree roots and push them over. If you push the whole tree over after loosening the soil the root ball will pop out and you can replace the dirt in the hole. I tend to cut up the trees I push over for firewood as that's what I heat with.

I bought my old hoe for $1500 and I've done some work replacing tires and hoses. But I am currently clearing a building site for a house that I'm building for a client.

Running equipment isn't hard, just take your time and figure out what everything does. I've been running equipment ever since my Dad told me to get on an excavator and figure it out. I was in my teens.

It occurs to me that you might not want to take out the trees until you're actually ready to do something with the land. I think you're right to be concerned about the top soil, and if you pull out all those trees before you're ready to do something immediately to replace those, you might find that valuable top soil being washed away. I don't know what your plan is long term, but I would work a half acre or one acre at a time.

What to do with the trees depends on what you want.
If you want to farm in a convential way with tilling the land every year you would need to remove the stumps.
I highly recommend not to do this because:
a) It was probably made an orchard for a reason, it may not be suited for annual crops
b) the cost to remove the stumps would be prohibitive, it is better to buy cleared land if you really want to that.
c) there is no way to do this with preserving the soil.
Also i have a generall no-till mindset, like most others here in the forum, as tilling always erodes the earth.

Assuming you want to make a savannah-like food forrest it would be the best thing to just cut down the stumps and let
most of them rot away in place. This creates the fungal environment that most trees like.
Leave some standing for special habitat, many birds/insects demand standig dead wood.
Proceed with hugels as time allows. Still i would rent some heavy equiment or a contractor for the initial clearout around your zone 1/2.

Also you might want to not plant cherries (on large scale) for a while, there are some cherry pathogens that prevent cherries from performing well where cherries stood before,
tough the mechanism is not understood. Something monocultre-related would be first guess why cherries died in the first place,
they are usually drought proof one established.

Also what is the fire hazard situation in your area?
Are the stumps dry(=fire hazard) or moist/rotten?

Carl Nystrom wrote: You could even dig a trench and burn slash inside to make a giant quantity of biochar. Just let it burn down, then push the dirt back on top. Instant carbon sequestration.

I think this is the opposite of carbon seqestration.
Letting it rot in place so that microorganisms can drag down the carbon over time is proper solution for carbon sequestration.

Another option is to use a Hydro Axe, or Ax. With this machine you can either run it like a mower which is very slow or do it the way I saw a land clearer do it. Look at the picture. You can raise the whole cutter up in the air and drop it over one of your trees and in seconds the tree will be gone. Then you drive to the next tree and repeat. You could only lower the cutter enough so that you could save a stump enough to pull the stump, but that would mean you'd be slowed down getting around the stump.

Something to consider: anyone have experience using horses or oxen to pull stumps.

The image is from this site: https://www.lumbermenonline.com/find-for-sale/Hydro-Ax?manufacturer=Hydro-Ax&makeid=1248 as I'm not sure the image will load. The machine is the "1986 Hydro Ax 520 brush cutter and land clearing", $24,900.

You might consider getting a bid from a land clearing company. The one I know has the Hydro Axe and a machine that goes up to a tree and grabs the trunk and then saws it off. It can then go to the next tree grab it also and cuts it. They can lay down a pile of trees so that they face toward a chipper and the pile will go into the chipper all at once. In the operation I saw they blew the chips into an enclosed 18 wheeler truck and hauled them off.

Letting it rot in place so that microorganisms can drag down the carbon over time is proper solution for carbon sequestration.

I am not a soil scientist, but I remember reading an interesting article about carbon storage in soil that suggests that carbon is perhaps not being sequestered in the soil the way it was long thought.  https://permies.com/t/164895/Death-Humus

Its an interesting article, and worth a read. I will also be quick to point out that my belief that biochar does persist in the soil for hundreds or thousands of years is also based on stuff I have read on the internet, much of it I think based on anecdotal evidence from south america; so that could also be disproved or at least called into question by more research.  

What I DO know is that you can make an awful lot of charcoal just by digging a trench and burning slash in it. Here is my thread on the subject; https://permies.com/t/157204/Experimenting-biochar-pit
I know about how much carbon my machines emit, and my conclusion is that using them to make char is quite carbon negative. But again, I am not really a scientist :)

I am familiar with area and cherry trees no long lived without constant care two options cut for wood fire and bigger logs for wood workers then forestry mulched to grind all the stumps and branches this would be contracted out 2 cut the wood and invest in a stump grinder for the tractor or a walk behind the stumps are then leveled so you run a cutter in the future and the mulch will compost on my farm this took us two years little patches at a time
One other option is to cut the trees leave a 4 to 5 ft stump and inoculate with mushroom spore this would give you 5 to 6 years of mushroom farming and decompose the trees

35 acres is a huge area for anything other than heavy equipment. It will take you a long time to do with hand tools and the like.

You say that you want to farm, potentially running livestock. Why do you even need to remove the trees at all? If you are running cattle, for example, they will happily wend their way through an orchard.

I haven't got a sense of the size of these trees. If they are large, maybe there is some value in the timber to sell, either as firewood, or lumber? Cherry can be quite sought after, if it is the right quality. You might find someone in you area willing to buy the standing trees, then process and sell the lumber. They take on the manual work, leaving you to get on with the actual farming.

The prized lumber cherry is not from an edible cherry tree but from the Wild Black Cherry. On that tree the fruit is very small maybe less than a 1/4" in diameter and is mostly nut. Small wildlife like them. I would find piles of shells split perfectly in half; one time in my trucks air cleaner. Many of the trees tend to have a bend in the trunk about every 3 feet or so. The tree is my favorite firewood, it has nice color and doesn't give you a splinter when you handle every log; like oak does.

Many great posts here. Many people chop trees or plants near the soil line.  This keeps all of the microbes healthy underground and doesn't remove the soil food web.  

I would definitely consider doing some trench style biochar.  It would help the soil a lot over time and sequester carbon for a long time.  I didn't see if you were going to make a different kind of orchard, pastureland, permaculture farming or what your next planned use will be. It is crucial to know that before deciding how you will respond to what you have now.  An orchard needs much more fungal soil than a farm with annual crops would.

JohN S
PDX OR

Do you know how hard cherry wood is???  The roots could stay hard for a very long time.  

That isn't necessarily a problem, depending on what is done with the property.
John S
PDX OR