ONE BAD MACHINE! Clearing more farmland...Day 1

hey there folks this is Josh Stoney Ridge farmer welcome back to the farm it's another beautiful day here in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina and we are moving in shaken today so this is our upper pond this is the smallest pond on the farm I built this little pond for water for the cows for up here in this field right here well today and over the next few days we're gonna take that cut over that mess over there and we're gonna make it into a field ok so we're gonna be clearing about 22 acres in the next few videos so I hope you'll subscribe to the channel jump in here pound that like button let's get busy let's go over and take a look at what's going on I can't get a lot of footage from the ground just yet because the land is rough it's not cleared so we're gonna get a whole lot of drone footage and I'll talk you through what we're doing clearing 22 acres here and we'll have an awesome series on clearing land we'll talk about all kinds of fun stuff all right [Applause] [Music] all right guys so I'm just on the other side there's that pond that we were just looking at I'm just on the other side of the pond and you can see back behind me there that is the pathway that we've had cleared out to access this section of property okay we're gonna toss the drone up in the air we're going to give you some cool footage if this is your first time to the Stoney Ridge farm channel please considered pound that like button subscribe to the channel there's awesome information here guys there's a lot of fun stuff tool reviews tractor reviews stuff like that plus there's huge projects like this so this is normally a project that someone would probably only take on maybe once in their life if ever in their life clearing a 22-acre section of land well we've done it three maybe four times here on the channel so it's a good time it's fun and it's educational Frank has drawn a road right up through here and he's using a 953 I believe it's a 953 Caterpillar loader we're gonna go over here check him out you can't get a whole lot of footage from the ground again so we'll be tossing the drone up in the air for a whole lot of the footage today and we'll talk you through what's going on [Music] now do you see what I mean by cut over and by I can't get back in here to show you what the heck is going on because it's just so thick with brush so this is what happens once you cut timber and you let it grow back and we've got a bunch of kind of I guess you call it weed trees there's a lot of weed trees like wild cherry which you know once it grows up and it makes a beautiful lumber but that's not what we're looking for here on the farm all this area is planted in loblolly pines it was planted I believe three we're on our third year and here's one of the trees right here okay right there's one of them and then there's another one right there so they're planted about ten or fifteen feet apart all the way through here and this will grow up and be an awesome thick pine thicket that we can use for silvopasture in the future once these Pines grow up a little bit now you can see this is the pathway that Frank has gone through here we're just gonna toss the drone up in the air and I'll walk you through and talk you through what we're doing okay Frank charges me by the hour it's a hundred and thirty five dollars an hour to have them in here rolling stumps and doing stuff a lot of folks are gonna comment on that that's way too much man this guy's riding around a 300 thousand dollar machine it cost money to have these machines out here working and it cost money to fix them when they break let's get busy toss the drone up in the air and we'll get you some before footage and a little footage during the day and then we'll come back at the end of the day first of all guys I want to thank you so much for coming to the Stoney Ridge farm channel it is my pleasure to help you guys out with your projects and your land clearing adventures or your farm adventures or if you're just living vicariously through me I hope you're enjoying it so this is the 22 acres section it is a cut over like we said before it's kind of a mess it's to be expected so all those little trees that you see are stump growth those are trees that have sprouted up from the stumps now there's a landmark right here you can see the power line that's kind of a landmark we'll be going off of in the future videos and in this video so the first area will clear is right below us now we're going to turn the drone around I failed to mention the field across the way that you saw and you can click back if you want to look at it but the field across the way was grown up just like this so we've cleared a lot of land on this farm big time and it seems like Frank is going kind of at a snail's pace right here but it's just tedious work pecking your way through all these old stumps so you'll be cruising around along and then boom hit a stump so he has to kind of take it a little bit easy you can't just plow through this or you'll tear up your machine you can tear the transmission out and tear all sorts of stuff out so it's important to know that for sure now we're going to get an interesting perspective as we fly up and away up up and away you can see again this is about 22 acres I got on the GIS website and measured it out and it measured out at right at 22 acres then we have a 24 acres section on the other side of the farm we're gonna start before Frank leaves so we're back and we're getting close to quittin time here I want to take you over and give me the update I have not seen how far Frank has gotten with the loader but I'd imagine he's working pretty hard so the goal was with this whole job I might have mentioned it before I hope you guys have been doing this drone footage and we'll get you some more drone footage here in just a minute and describe what's going on but the goal was today to just get an area cleared all the way around the perimeter of where we're going to work and then we'll judge off of that where we're going to push our stumps so whether we push them over the hill whether we load them up and haul them to a hole somewhere here on the farm or whether we roll them off in the woods and just let them naturally decay and feed the land so that's where we're at right now I'm gonna ride over here I'm gonna try to do a complete lap so I'm going to throw the GoPro up on the Kubota I've got it put it right up there we're gonna throw that up there we're gonna have some fun we're going to zip all the way around here and see how it's turned out so far again this is probably going to be a I'm gonna say a five to seven day project here okay so we're looking at at least 40 hours maybe 50 hours worth of work it's a lot of money to spend but when we cut our timber we knew where we're gonna put that money back into our land back into our land on our fences back into our land on our equipment and back into our land on building more pasture so we can have more cattle more livestock and more opportunity to make money here on our farm awesome let's go check them out and see what it looks like for real drive time when you're having stuff like this done on your property it's really an adventure it's really just awesome and enjoyable me and mrs. Stoney Rachel come over here and watch Frank work for a few hours tomorrow and just see the progress that that gets made you're getting ready to see why we call this the Stoney Ridge farm also I'll show you there's a rock over here how big is the Komodo [Music] for little ways I'm doing a full lap right now that's why we called the Stoney Ridge there are rocks all over you look for rocks rocks rocks rocks everywhere at rocks guys I don't know if you've seen the footage of me flying around right here but I'll tell you even if you have a property like this it's really really rocky there is work to be done and don't lose hope if you bought a piece of property and you found out it was really rocky or you're looking at a fairly rocky piece of property understand that that could be a big setback and then again it could be not so big setback so look at the neighboring properties and make sure that you know the way the land lays so if you've got a property right next door to you and has beautiful pastures and yours looks ugly and rocky or like that you can get a good deal on it spend a few bucks per acre and get her done man make some money on your property make your property value go up that's what the whole goal is this is part of our retirement and part of our savings I don't ever see myself not working on this farm I only see myself building the farm for future generations let's take a lap [Music] [Applause] [Music] this is a fun little trip right here tomorrow's video I'm going to show you or the next video in the series anyway I'm going to show you how brain open up some beautiful beautiful hardwoods over there cannot wait and I hope I don't tip over right here I can't wait to get my wood mines there put it to work we're gonna be harvesting hopefully enough lumber to build our house awesome we're coming up on the drone now alright I'm pulling around here on the Kubota and we're gonna get some shots of Frank working here here we go it's always enjoyable uh clearing land and listening to some nice peaceful music you guys are gonna be absolutely amazed this is not in real time so you'll get to see some awesome footage in tomorrow's video I can't wait to share it with you guys frank is busting his butt out here man i'm super happy with it looks like to me as much progress as he's made today looks like we'll probably be in about a five day period to get this entire area cleared off I hope the drone gave you a little bit more perspective as to what we're doing this is a huge huge project beautiful home sites up here could easily put our permanent home right here we have a plan pond that's probably going to take up about five to eight acres back in here so lots of work to do lots of work to go here on the farm we got to get this right we got to establish and pasture get some fences here get mowed around it start rotating our cattle on this this will be beautiful pasture awesome guys be sure you've found that like button on the way out the door and follow this series at the end of the video there'll be a link to the next video in this series clearing land thanks a lot we'll see you next time [Music] you