Arb Hill

Thank you for the insights.

We have cleared some understory in our woods to give some open forest floor to "play" with. I have a few goals here, one work on moving water along countour to meet with stream on downside of property. We have heavy clay soil, very little loam so when it rains which is frequent - we are in Ohio, the water just flows like a river across surface. I have plans to develop soil over time via wood chips and leaves. Another goal is to integrate natives, some understory edible vines, fruit trees/ bushes, medicinal and culinary plants/ shrubs. We are probably going to have some chickens in a mobile pen to scratch through woods. This area will also be where the little ones can run around, have a tree fort etc. I have a mass of wood from felling dead ash trees and some pruning of live elm, maple, poplar that i plan to use for chipping and hugelkulthur. My question around hugelkulter is with my water flow on surface it would seem i want to build so beds follow contour, i also want to have them sort of act as boarder to area in pics. As you can see my wood piles are significant, what is too much wood? I am very open to ideas on best practice for wooded area beds, anything i should be thinking about before i start applying soil? I have 20 yards of soil/ peat moss mix on site to use and probably half a truck of leaf hummus, peat and leaf good to add to mix? The green leaves should i be keeping out of the ground and lay on top of soil? Thanks for your time!

Thanks Jack, i am in north central Ohio so 5/6 zone line. PH of soil is tbd, going to get a soil sample tested.

Attached IMG is what i have cleared, the area does extend back but narrows into a few seperate paths. The ground is heavy clay and hard and does not soak water up much at all. The property has slight contour so water flows across surface eventually to stream. I knew i wanted to clear the understory out to give us more use of the 4acres we have which is mostly wooded. I kept all mature canopy trees which are maple, poplar, black locust, elm and sweetgum. The understory is alot of briar and other unknown shrubs. I plan to keep my clearing to just about what you see in the img.

My plan was to create some channels to get water running underground but that crosses our septic area so maybe outside my skill set. The other plan was to chip/ shred and spread as mulch around cleared area for a few yrs to build up soil and organic matter. The ground cover in this area pre my clearing was non existant, only shrubs. The area also has no leaf litter, my asumption is the surface water after the heavy rains we have had moves the leaves our of this area and down toward stream. I will take a closer look tomorrow on areas I have not cleared and follow this post up.

Did i get carried away on my tractor tearing the area up with the front end loader? Im feeling a bit uneasy about my plan or lack of plan.. i now have this cleared forest area but not clear on what i should do next. Being damp clay soil the ground is already tightly bound and hard, did I compact the ground even more running tractor through? I had plans to use the PTO to run a 4" chipper in the area as well so more tractor traffic around the area to spread it etc.
Long term goals for area, play area for kids, rebuild soil, plant new understory of natives, get water moving from areas that flatten and pool water after rains. Creat paths and "nooks" in the forest. We do have deer through here so need to be considering deer resistant plants... again my soil is just pure clay.. no real top soil loam.
Picture of site