Comment by Adam Downing on October 17, 2014 at 11:39am

The logging slash was piled and burned following the Silvopasture thinning.

Comment by Jeff Jourdain on October 17, 2014 at 6:25pm

Adam-

Photos look great.  Any idea of what pushing the slash up and burning the piles cost?

Jeff

Comment by Adam Downing on October 21, 2014 at 2:38pm

Yes, here is a summary of our costs so far.

Stand half that was pushed ~ 2 acres.  Some of the pushing was done as part of the thinning. I hired the logging contractor to bring his Skidder back in and push some more on the 2 acres for an extra $500.  We felt like the site was not clean enough after this so we hired prisoners to hand-pick the site.  A dozer or something could have done better than a simple 40 year old cable skidder.

We hired a forestry mulcher contractor at $140/hour to clean up the other 2 acres.  He did 7 hours of mulching ($980) and 10 hours at $100/hr of piling excess brush ($1000) for a total of $1980 on 2 acres.

Following this mechanical work, we hired a contractor to spray 2.25 acres of the site (alll of the pushed side and some spot spraying on the mulched side) of sprouts that had come up since the harvest in late May.  Sprayed with 4% Garlon 4 costs $425

So far we've got $2908 in site prep costs.  We made a little from the thinning harvest but it was a pretty poor stand.

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