Land clearing and forestry mulching that leaves land you can use

Forestry mulching is land clearing done with a single machine. A rotating drum of carbide teeth, mounted on the boom of an excavator, grinds standing trees, brush and saplings into a layer of chip that stays on the ground. There is no pile, no burn, no trucking, and no line of dump trailers coming and going down your road.

The traditional alternative is to cut, pile, haul and burn — three or four pieces of equipment, several operators, disposal costs, and a property that looks like a construction site when it's over. Mulching does it in one pass and leaves a finished surface behind.

Reach and stability. A skid steer mulcher has to drive up to whatever it's cutting, so it struggles on slopes, soft ground and anything it can't get underneath. An excavator carries the mulching head on a boom, which means we can stand on solid ground and reach out over a ditch, a wet spot, a bank or a fence line, and we can work down a treeline from one side without ever driving into the standing timber.

It also means less ground disturbance. The machine tracks over a smaller area, and on sensitive ground we can work off the mulch mat we've already laid down.

Mulching on its own does not. The head grinds the stump flush or slightly below grade, which is perfect for trails, pasture, woodlot improvement and general property cleanup — but the root ball stays in the ground.

If you're building on it, the stumps and roots have to come out, and that's a separate operation called grubbing. We run a second machine with a bucket and thumb for exactly that. Most building lots get mulched first and grubbed second — see excavation and site preparation.

Honestly, nobody can tell you over the phone, and you should be careful with anyone who does. The price of clearing an acre in Salisbury with open hardwood and good access is nothing like the price of an acre of thick alder and spruce on a slope in Albert County.

We quote on site, free, and the number we give you is the number you pay. Our cost guide walks through the seven things that actually move the price so you can size up your own property before we get there.

The mulching head handles standing stems comfortably up to roughly 8 to 10 inches, and will take bigger ones down in stages. Above that it stops being efficient — merchantable timber is worth more standing up in a log truck than ground into chip.

When a lot has a mix, the sensible plan is usually to have the sawlogs cut and taken out first, then bring us in to mulch everything that's left. We'll tell you straight when that's the better route, even though it means less work for us.

On your own land, away from water, usually not — but there is one rule that catches people out constantly. In New Brunswick, work within 30 metres of a watercourse or wetland requires a Watercourse and Wetland Alteration Permit from the Department of Environment and Local Government, and land clearing counts as work. That includes brooks and ditches you might not think of as a watercourse.

Your municipality may also have its own rules, and if you're inside Moncton, Dieppe or Riverview city limits you should check before anything starts. We'll flag anything we see on the quote visit, but the permit is the landowner's responsibility and we won't start work that needs one until it's in hand.