We had this machine out at our place last weekend. Initially, he was there to clean up around a pond, that took all of 45 min and that included low brush and some trees up to 10-12 inches in diameter. He stayed another 3.25 hours and cleaned up quite a bit, turned it all into mulch. I can't wait to get him back out there.

Just guessing, but I don't think anybody in the Sierra Club owns one.

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Release the Kraken

Would like to have had a better view of the business end, esp.
how the operator was protected from the debris but you were
wise to keep well out of spitting distance of that pulverizer!

Personally I'd have gone all in for the excavator mulcher like in the
video below only if the price included some seat time.
Couldn't help it... 50 sec. in I laughed myself to tears...

I have heard of the Sierra Club. Do you get a discount on bullets if you are a member?

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That's gonna leave a mark.

Here is the business end of the subject machine. The operator sits behind a door made of Lexan in an air conditioned cab. Pretty comfy while he does his work. There are some amazing machines out there.

My neighbor 's fields were over run with weeds, yucca and a persistent shrub we call Buck brush. Few years back he started spraying for the weeds and allowed me to run my 5' Bush Hog over the brush.

The change in two years is simply amazing. GREEN grass now where we had brush and weeds.

It's nice when You clear land and open it up to green grass and sunshine.

CZU - If I may ask, how much were you charged for the cleanup? I've seen those machines in operation (they make a ferocious amount of dust, so better check with neighbors) and have thought about hiring one to do our overgrown back acre.

I got this itch I can't quite reach...

Flagger stopped us while one of those excavator mulchers cleared a right of way on a SC road shoulder. Amazing to watch it turn standing timber to wood chips in seconds.

I'm with you on wanting some seat time.

ameridaddy, he gets $125 an hour for his services and figures the time by the meter on his machine. I wrote him a check for 500 and was happy to do it. It would have taken me at least every Saturday till the end of the year to do what he did in 4 hours except I would be doing it with a chainsaw, hauling it over to my brushpile and then burning it. It was worth it to me.

About 15 years ago, I saw around 10 acres of overgrown smaller trees, maybe more, get cleared out in less than a day with that kind of excavator-mulcher equipment. Very impressive.

I just had an acre plus of some of the thickest East Texas piney woods you can imagine done and it was the same price and took almost 8 hours of non stop machine time to do. I have a fellow now who will do nine more acres for 5,000 and says he will have it done in two long days. He has a much larger and more powerful machine though. The mulch on the ground is so thick it is hard to walk through. You definitely need ear plugs though!

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Hue 68 noli me tangere

Before I retired I hired contractors to mulch several hundred acres. Amazing machines and they can really clean up a lot of unwanted woody plants and get them out of the picture. A little pricey but the end results are good. Wood chips ankle deep everywhere.

I wanted to do that around my cabin on the pond in Maine but then found out that it is now against the law. Maine has this water protection act or law that places all kind of restrictions against brush or tree clearing within 200 feet of any type of water. Ocean, river, stream, pond or lake.

We used to do it with a neighbors brush hog when I was a teen but they have since died and I have no idea what ever happened to that machine. IIRC it was like an "S" shaped blade on a vertical shaft motor set up on wheels that looked like a bicycle. We mainly used it to keep the blueberry bushes trimmed low so the black flies would get blown back to HELL from where they came.

If you get caught doing it now it is probably a huge fine.

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James Redfield
LM #497