We have been clearing our land since we bought the farm. The trees on the land were so thick, that from the road, we didn't even realize that there was a trailer on the property. We actually picked our house site without really being able to visualize the layout of the land.
Our goal is to have pasture land for cattle. So the first step was logging. We hired a logging company to come in and cut down the trees on some of the property. The worked for about 4 months and cleared at least 20 acres. Most of the wood that they cut was pine, some oak and poplar. They used heavy equipment to cut down the trees, skidders to drag the trees out of the woods, a large saw to cut the trees to a consistent size and then log trucks to transport the wood to the wood yard for sale. The sale of lumber and fire wood have been the primary revenue source for the farm to date.
Once the logging was finished, the next step was to clear the land. When loggers cut trees, the stumps are left. So we purchased a heavy piece of equipment to dig the stumps out of the ground. Here is a photo of our caterpillar 955. The C955 was also used for grading the land, smoothing out areas where the stump and roots made a hole the size of a small swimming pool.
After the stumps were removed, we used our Bobcat skid-steer to move the stumps, sticks, limbs, etc. into a large pile for burning. (Burning brush is legal in our county during certain times of the day, and safe during certain times of the year. On another project we burned an acre of bamboo in the middle of town, but that's a story for another blog). The best investment we made was a grapple attachment for the Bobcat (see photo). The grapple allowed us to lift stumps that we as large as the Bobcat and slowly move them to the pile. It also turned out to be a great tool for raking sticks and other small debris into rows.
The final tool that we used for the farm was another attachment for the Bobcat, a rock-picker. This tool picks up very small pieces of debris, without dropping it on the way to it's destination.
It's that time of the year again, time to plant the garden. The clay soil is so hard and poor that we are always looking for new ways to improve it. This year we decided to plow the soil before tilling. Seen above, we used a plow that digs down into the soil about 16 inches. We only go through the garden once with the plow, but we will till the garden multiple times in order to achieve the proper soil texture. This year we are also doubling the size of the garden in order to accommodate for succession planting. 
