Need advice - medium to small trees blocking new property entrance

[peakbagger]

I envy your stone walls. The rocks over my way tend to be round, a lot harder to stack or boulders. I have farmers walls on my house lot which usually were just a place with some big rocks too big to move where they moved the smaller rocks.

A lot of stone walls were stolen over the years. There is market for good aged stacking stone and for years landscapers would just find a old wall out in the country and load it up. With good neighbors its not an issue.

Sounds like you have good start.

 

[RodM]

I envy your stone walls. The rocks over my way tend to be round, a lot harder to stack or boulders. I have farmers walls on my house lot which usually were just a place with some big rocks too big to move where they moved the smaller rocks.

A lot of stone walls were stolen over the years. There is market for good aged stacking stone and for years landscapers would just find a old wall out in the country and load it up. With good neighbors its not an issue.

Sounds like you have good start.

Thanks. Upstate NY, stone walls tend to look more like the ones on my property. Tend to be flat shale and such.

I have heard of stories of stone walls being stolen upstate NY as well. Thieves sell some to companies downstate that use them as pavers on peoples properties and such.

The property we purchased has not been lived on for about 65 years give or take as per the prior owners that we know. The property has been untouched all that time and all the walls are still there which is shocking to be honest but this is a very small town and the road with the property is not exactly highly traveled. People upstate who have lived up there a long time keep an eye on properties on their road so maybe that helped.

I really look forward to rebuilding those sections that need attention in the spring. The wall along the frontage needs some attention as well but it will look great once done.

I never heard of farmers walls, what were their purpose? Most stone walls upstate historically were used as property dividing lines etc. I think some were used to keep live stock on the property even though I am not sure about that to be honest.

Enjoy your walls regardless

 

[tadmaz]

Get a tomahawk, hack them down, all the while humming the theme to the Last of the Mohicans!

 

[xman23]

Trees on the edge of the road, and no power line trimming has been done, I bet they are real top heavy on the road side. To drop them toward the property, you will have to pull them with a come along. Don't think about doing a bunch of trees with a bow saw. It will get old real quick. And cutting off stumps at ground level without a good chain saw, forget it.

If there's a quick time frame, any tree guy can do it in a few hours. Shop a few prices.

But If it was me I would take this opportunity to learn something new. Something that will come in handy with a wooded lot. We all started very much like you.

 

[peakbagger]

A farmers wall really isnt a wall signifying anything. Its just a place to pile up rocks so they can grow something. I read that when woods are cut down and someone attempts to cultivate the soil its will take a couple of decades for the frost to lift up any rocks below the soil and and above the frost line. So farmers would pick all the rocks that were visible and pile them up someplace to they could try to till the soil. By next year a new crop of rocks would appear and they would pick them out again for a real long time. They usually wanted to maximize the length in one direction they could cultivate so the rocks tended to get piled up in long lines with large boulders too hard to move acting as the location of the start of the line of rocks.

BTW depending on your acreage you may be able to get some free help from the local cooperative extension to manage your trees. Unmanaged forest land tends to have far too many small trees per acre. Eventually over a very long time they may thin out but it can be accelerated by picking the best potential candidates and cutting the rest. This is normally done a couple of times over the life to a woodland before the real prime specimens are left. The trick is to concentrate the growth into fewer trees without defects. If too many trees are taken at once the understory (plants that grow under the canopy can take over so its done slowly. Its also good to see if you have any invasive that may have snuck in so you can control them. Here is link for some. Best time to look is in the spring https://www.newyorkupstate.com/news/erry-2018/07/3090a766552668/upstate-ny-invasive-plants.html

 

[RodM]

tadmaz

Funny

xman23

All is done already, see my post that was added on Sunday.

peakbagger

That is very interesting and very cool at the same time. Learned something new today.

Also very interesting on your other point but I don't think 2.5 acres is large enough to get free help. We plan on thinning out the trees a bit as during the summer, little sun gets to the ground and it seems to stay way to wet and damp. We want to leave the larger ones and reduce the small ones so the land can breath a bit and the ground can dry out as well. When we looked at the property during very late summer, no sun really got to the ground, there was barely any green growth on the ground. Just tons of old leaf layers and such. Maybe a fern here and there but not much else. To me the density seems to high and there is a lot of dead and or dying trees but also plenty of healthy ones. It would be nice to get some sun down to the ground, even if it's just in certain areas.

For now I doubt anything invasive is on the property as there is almost no undergrowth whatsoever. I guess in spring would be better to see if and what might pop up.