Pinelands Middle Field Transformation

The daily afternoon thundershower pattern is upon us now, but for the past several weeks it has been dry, allowing us to get in and do some serious work in parts of fields that are often too damp, such that the tractors get bogged down and stuck.  This past weekend and the week before, Jeffrey and I were working in what we call the "middle pinelands field".  This is a logged out pine field Jeffrey has been working on for some time, smoothing out the bed-form mounds that pine trees were planted on, pushing over rotted stumps and pushing down brush.  Now we are finally getting it ready for planting pasture grass.  The latest activity was to push back the brush and small trees along the edges of the field, grind down stumps the hadn't rotted, and disk the whole field to start smoothing it out.

With the International and the bulldozer blade mounted on it, Jeffrey pushes brush and trees to the field edge.

Small trees are pushed over.  

And pushed into the edge of the field.

Larger trees are cut down using the turbo saw on the back of the Fiat.  Here the grapple of the turbo saw is used to move a cut down tree to the edge.  Even larger trees are cut down with a chainsaw.

Once cut down, the remaining stumps are ground to bits with the "stump grinder" that is attached to the back of the John Deere.

Here is the stump, prior to grinding.  Attached to the large, heavy grinding wheel are carbide tipped teeth that do the grinding work.  The turbo saw is similar, it has a large horizontal metal disk with carbide teeth set in it that cut through the tree.

Here is the stump grinder grinding away.  It is a slow process.  Usually the cutting edge is lowered an inch at a time and swept over the stump, grinding off sequential layers. 

When done, one is left with no stump, a whole in the ground and a mound of chips mixed with dirt.

Here is Jeffrey in the International pulling the disk over the middle pinelands field.

Next step will be to have a couple tons per acre of lime spread over the field to bring the pH up a little bit so the pasture grass will have better access to nutrients.  Disk in the lime.  Then spread the bahia grass seed.