Renovating 25 Acre Rocky Woodland into Grass Pasture Opinions Needed

[landrand]

I'm looking to purchase 40 acres of property in Michigan USA. The property was completely wooded and the owner had the property trees clear cut two years ago. The owner started to remove the stumps from several acres, unfortunately he recently passed away and the property is now for sale. With a lot of work, looks like about 25 acres could be made into pasture.

The soil is a very fine sandy loam and is considered very stony. I am considering buying this property and making the 25 acres into pasture for a few Scottish Highlands I have. I currently own a 100 HP John Deer tractor and a backhoe and am familiar with pulling stumps, but have never worked with soil that had a lot of boulders and rocks in it. I'm attaching a few pictures of an area where the stumps were pulled illustrating all the rocks. Whats your opinion about working this acreage into grass pasture. Is it even feasible to try to remove the rocks from this soil. If so, any recommendations as to what equipment or perhaps attachments I would need to remove the rocks? I understand what it would take to remove the larger boulders, but I'm not sure what I would need to do for the smaller stones. Any opinions or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

 

[D14]

I'm looking to purchase 40 acres of property in Michigan USA. The property was completely wooded and the owner had the property trees clear cut two years ago. The owner started to remove the stumps from several acres, unfortunately he recently passed away and the property is now for sale. With a lot of work, looks like about 25 acres could be made into pasture.

The soil is a very fine sandy loam and is considered very stony. I am considering buying this property and making the 25 acres into pasture for a few Scottish Highlands I have. I currently own a 100 HP John Deer tractor and a backhoe and am familiar with pulling stumps, but have never worked with soil that had a lot of boulders and rocks in it. I'm attaching a few pictures of an area where the stumps were pulled illustrating all the rocks. Whats your opinion about working this acreage into grass pasture. Is it even feasible to try to remove the rocks from this soil. If so, any recommendations as to what equipment or perhaps attachments I would need to remove the rocks? I understand what it would take to remove the larger boulders, but I'm not sure what I would need to do for the smaller stones. Any opinions or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

If the ground is properly sandy the easiest way to do this is with a decent sized 360, probably 20t version, and a stone bucket to sieve out the stone which you can then put into piles to collect at a later date or direct into a stone cart to remove from the site. The sandy soil will fall out of the bucket through the slots leaving the stones in the bucket.
At the same time the 360 can level the humps and hollows out as you go. If you hit it hard full time you'd cover 25 acres properly in 4 weeks easily enough doing the stone and levelling job. The stump removal would take longer though but again the 360 would be as good as anything to do this. This is how majority of the local amenity companies clear areas for local councils around here and we did a paddock, much smaller than your area a couple of years ago and it worked very well.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Unroll hay on it all winter and let time and nature do the work?

Unless you have intentions of haying it in the future, cattle would prefer a landscape with features over a billiard table.

For the time and expense of using machinery, you could buy literally tons and tons of hay, the nutrients from which will be retained on your land.
The effects of this will be huge - you're building the depth of soil, reactivating natural processes; but also you'll be importing seed and nutrients (often at below cost of production) in the process.

That's the approach I'd advocate, because it works pretty well, anywhere.

You could either set out bales during summer and tarp them to keep them dry, or build a bale unroller, or simply roll them around by hand.

 

[landrand]

Unroll hay on it all winter and let time and nature do the work?

Unless you have intentions of haying it in the future, cattle would prefer a landscape with features over a billiard table.

For the time and expense of using machinery, you could buy literally tons and tons of hay, the nutrients from which will be retained on your land.
The effects of this will be huge - you're building the depth of soil, reactivating natural processes; but also you'll be importing seed and nutrients (often at below cost of production) in the process.

That's the approach I'd advocate, because it works pretty well, anywhere.

You could either set out bales during summer and tarp them to keep them dry, or build a bale unroller, or simply roll them around by hand.

 

[le bon paysan]

Could you chisel plow the ground and find someone with a rock picker to come and lift the stones and rocks?

 

[landrand]

I walked the property the other day. There are some flat areas but also a plenty of hills with gentle slopes. Native grass/legumes (red clover) are already growing on the cleared acreage. Unfortunately, a lot of sedges/rushes/weeds are also growing. In it's current state, I'm sure if I put the Highlands on it, they would be able to feed off the natural growth. It wouldn't be ideal, but they would survive on the acreage. Longer term, I would prefer to have a more manageable pasture. In it's current state, I probably wouldn't be able to drag a disk through all the boulders/rocks. I have a root grapple attachment for my tractor loader so I should be able to remove the large boulders. Not sure what to do about all the smaller boulders/rocks?

 

[CornishTone]

Is the ground just for grazing or do you plan to cut a bit of hay as well?

 

[onesiedale]

make yourself a nice drystone wall with the small /medium size stones

 

[landrand]

It would be great if I could cut some hay. Don't have haying equipment, but could pick up equipment as required. The acreage has about 17 acres with 0-6% slopes. 13 acres is about 6 to 18% slope. Don't think I could hay without removing rocks first.

 

[Dry Rot]

Highland cattle, like Highland ponies, will eat and convert roughage. There were a lot of rushes here when I moved in over 30 years ago. None at all now. I keep Highland ponies. I'd be surprised if your Highland cattle wouldn't demolish them in a year or two.

 

[CornishTone]

It would be great if I could cut some hay. Don't have haying equipment, but could pick up equipment as required. The acreage has about 17 acres with 0-6% slopes. 13 acres is about 6 to 18% slope. Don't think I could hay without removing rocks first.

Hence my question. Smaller rocks could be rolled in if you were so inclined but the bigger ones may have to be removed to avoid damage to machinery. Remember, rocks are a constituent part of the soil and will help with drainage etc, so it is possible to go too far in removing then and cause slump.

 

[D14]

This but on a 360 would be perfect.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

It's often a better option on tougher ground, just to cover it up, rather than dig it up more than necessary.
I'm not suggesting that you can't roll out boulders and stumps, but you'll probably end up with all kinds of crazy things growing wherever you disturb the soil!

If you are in an area where hay is available cheaply, then I'd use that as a way to build up your fertility - remember where the sedges and rushes are and literally layer the hay on.
Let your cattle have at it, waste plenty, and you may grow an inch of topsoil on those areas in a year or two.

I think (others will think differently) that your best bet may be to leave the smaller rocks and simply bury them under biomass.
In a really wet time, you may actually be glad of them!
More progressive types would strip the whole area back, plant a simple grass mix, put fertilizer on it, and then have to put the cattle in a barn because they stopped their land from behaving as an ecosystem - you can simply boost the potential and ability of yours!
The more natural your landscape is, the more resilient it will be. Hollows will grow grass in dry times, boulders will shelter calves and lambs as well as anything you can buy.

It really all comes down to what you really want to create - if you want it to be something that fills in your days, or simply allows you to graze your cattle and enjoy them.
Your natural and native species will be far better than most anything you can buy, because they've already adapted themselves to suit the niche they grow in.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

make yourself a nice drystone wall with the small /medium size stones

 

[landrand]

Although I see the logic of keeping the land natural, at its current state, the land is very rugged. Where the stumps were not removed, the area is already covered with thick vegetation to include bushes, some grass, sedges, rushes, small aspen trees, etc. Vegetation is thick and about waist high and walking across was difficult as you couldn't see what you were walking on. Tree limbs were left on the ground, stumps, large boulders, potholes, etc. I would assume the logging machinery already did a good job in disturbing the soil.

It would be difficult to winter feed hay bales on the areas that would be good for pasture. The soil doesn't appear to drain well and would be wet and in the late fall/early winter. Don't think I could drive a tractor on it due to sinking in the soil. I live in Michigan Upper Peninsula and our winters are severe. We get lots of snow and I would have wait till the ground froze before I could drive a tractor on it. Here's a couple of pics of what the winters are like here. Enjoy!

 

[steveR]

Looks like you have got teh right beasties for your land!! Heilin' Coos look at home... almost!

 

[Flat 10]

Unroll hay on it all winter and let time and nature do the work?

Unless you have intentions of haying it in the future, cattle would prefer a landscape with features over a billiard table.

For the time and expense of using machinery, you could buy literally tons and tons of hay, the nutrients from which will be retained on your land.
The effects of this will be huge - you're building the depth of soil, reactivating natural processes; but also you'll be importing seed and nutrients (often at below cost of production) in the process.

That's the approach I'd advocate, because it works pretty well, anywhere.

You could either set out bales during summer and tarp them to keep them dry, or build a bale unroller, or simply roll them around by hand.

Simple but clever

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Simple but clever

I'm on quite a few of the Regenerative ag FB groups, it seems a fairly popular way for the North Americans to renovate those type of degraded environments.
It appears a lot of those little niches exist, but the soils have been really buggered by farming methods used in the past, to the point of being virtually worthless for grazing.
And so the land value is lower, because of that it's affordable for the next generation of farmers to come in and regenerate it.
Just like 100 years ago, but smarter
It's often simply a matter of putting back all the OM that has been lost due to abuse or erosion - so the bale-grazing and hay-unrolling approach is very popular.

Gets the soil working again, but best of all it's cost effective - you'd probably already be buying hay, just a matter of wasting lots of it on the ground!

 

[landrand]

Kiwi Pete, could you recommend a few of the regenerative agriculture FB or web forums you mention. I would be interested in checking them out. Thanks!

 

[farmerm]

That sort of ground looks best left as woodland, forests for the future...