want to clear 2 acres for orchard/food forest

Hello everyone, I live on a property where I would like to clear about 2 acres of land to create an orchard/food forest.  This is in northern/central North Carolina.  The land is not entirely flat, a little hilly here and there, but mostly flat compared to the rest of my land.  It currently contains mostly pine trees, some as large as about 3 ft in diameter, but most are probably under 20 inches.  There is little undergrowth, and I would say the trees are spaced roughly 10-15 ft on average.  I would like to clear this land, fence it in, plant fruit trees, berry bushes, etc. and also have some chickens/ducks/etc. to roam around in it.  My question boils down to how exactly should I have it cleared?  Should I simply have it forest mulched or have the trees ripped out and burned?  I feel mostly against ripping them out and burning them, but I can see how the larger trees could be an issue with their large trunks left in the ground.  I'd prefer to just have it all mulched so I can use the wood chips as a ground cover and for mulching the trees I plant, and they're good for the soil.  If needed I could always get one of those stump removal attachments for my tractor (at least for the smaller stumps).  Any advice is greatly appreciated.

James Raymond wrote:Hello everyone, I live on a property where I would like to clear about 2 acres of land to create an orchard/food forest.  This is in northern/central North Carolina.  The land is not entirely flat, a little hilly here and there, but mostly flat compared to the rest of my land.  It currently contains mostly pine trees, some as large as about 3 ft in diameter, but most are probably under 20 inches.  There is little undergrowth, and I would say the trees are spaced roughly 10-15 ft on average.  I would like to clear this land, fence it in, plant fruit trees, berry bushes, etc. and also have some chickens/ducks/etc. to roam around in it.  My question boils down to how exactly should I have it cleared?  Should I simply have it forest mulched or have the trees ripped out and burned?  I feel mostly against ripping them out and burning them, but I can see how the larger trees could be an issue with their large trunks left in the ground.  I'd prefer to just have it all mulched so I can use the wood chips as a ground cover and for mulching the trees I plant, and they're good for the soil.  If needed I could always get one of those stump removal attachments for my tractor (at least for the smaller stumps).  Any advice is greatly appreciated.

I have 4-1/2 acres of hardwood forest in north Georgia. I had looked into having my property logged and sold to a lumber mill but the market is unfavorable in this economy and in my state. In leu of that I bought a 2nd-hand chainsaw & Alaskan sawmill to make use of my lumber. I’ve waited a while to find a woodchipper but haven’t had the funds for that so I bought a burn barrel. (Please pay attention to local burning regulations and conditions if you choose this option).

To answer your question, the most common way is to hire a crew and have everything chipped. Personally It breaks my heart to consider old growth rendered to mulch. I want to preserve the little bit of white pine I have growing on my property for evergreen cover and the bark is just stunning😍.

James,

Last year I have cleared around 2000 m2 of eucalyptus (me plus a helper). Big logs I kept for milling, 4-6" for posts, 2-4" for firewood, some branches I chipped and most of them burned. I dug all roots with a backhoe. I would not like to have a planting area with roots left underground for several reasons:
-potential allelopathy of eucalyptus
-it will regrow even if cut to the ground level
-it decomposes very, very slowly
-I could not use my tractor with attachments
-it looks ugly

After that the terrain was graded, I disced it, raked it, amended the soil with barn bedding, rototilled, fenced (using the posts from the trees I cut) and will grow grapes, figs and melons/watermelons there.
I created a shallow trench to discharge water to the stream during the rainy season and the soil turned out to have very high clay contents and I hope it will help my melons to use less water during summer.