More Clearing

The first forest clearing was not big enough, was in the wrong place, and had stumps in the ground.

The first forest clearing was not big enough.
The first forest clearing was not big enough.

In creating a clearing in the woods for construction of my storage building, I had made three mistakes. I needed to fix each of them before I could continue the building project.

The clearing was not large enough. I had created enough space for the building, but did not include enough margin for open space around the building. This was important because I didn’t want trees and limbs falling on the new shed, and I would need some “walk around” space. The builder recommended 8-10 feet of margin around the edge of the building…more would be better.

The clearing was not in the right place. I had visually estimated the distance from the road (inaccurately), and also failed to include the 25 foot right of way from the center of the road.

I hadn’t dealt properly with the large tree stumps. Instead of removing them (time consuming), I had my heavy equipment guys simply grind them down to just below the forest floor. The problem with that approach is that if I were to construct a building over the dead stump, the floor would gradually cave in as the stump deteriorated.

The solution had three parts:

  1. Make a drawing showing how many feet everything needed to be.
  2. Based on the drawing, use a long tape measure to determine, with some degree of precision, exactly where the building would be located, as well as the clearance around it.
  3. Bring back the heavy equipment guys to clear some additional forest, this time digging out the stumps, rather than leaving them in the ground.
I drew out the measurements I needed for proper clearance from the forest and sufficient setback for the Zoning Commissioner.
I drew out the measurements I needed for proper clearance from the forest and sufficient setback for the Zoning Commissioner.

The heavy equipment guys (the Forest Muncher Guy and his talented Son) returned, this time with two pieces of equipment.

They understood the problem, and since I had already measured (this time with a 100′ steel tape) and placed bright pink flags to mark the margins, they could get right to work.

This secondary clearing went relatively quickly, except for the stump removal. Instead of using the forest mulcher, we used front end loaders mounted on the skid steer and a bulldozer to push the trees over before dragging them away, roots and all. For the larger trees, we needed to first dig out around the roots, freeing them from the surrounding dirt, before pushing them over. Here’s a video of the heavy equipment guys at work in my forest: