Mass Division of Fish and Wildlife habitat mowing

Scrub oak mowing at the Montague Plains Wildlife Managment Area, Montague, MA.  We did a total of 58 acres here.

 

 

 

 

New Tractor and Bush Hog

I have added a new tractor to our equipment.  It’s primary use is field mowing, it can mow material up to three inches in diameter if needed.

Here I am mowing in McLeans Game Refuge, a great place to be and just couldn’t be happier to be working there! I mowed over 50 acres of fields and a dike surrounding a pond.

The tractor is a 2008 New Holland T5070 with a 15 foot Bush Hog mower. 

A Quick Clean Up

A quick clean up of several building lots, the better they look, the faster they sell!

Embankment Mowing

Light brush and 1-2 inch saplings on a steep bank. This was about 3 year growth.

Woodland grooming – Thinning

We call this woodland grooming.  We can go through mature timber and clean up all the small growth, remove lower limbs and produce a park like look.  It allows the yard to flow in to wooded areas without a hard delineation between manicured and natural areas.

Before clean up.

 

After “grooming”

7 Acres of mixed growth – Field grasses to dense saplings.

We used 3 different attachments on this old farm site.

 

The front field got mowed first.  The briars were tall and thick.

 

Now to the brushy area across a small stream and the dense sapling are past the tallest trees in the distance.  We had to pack up and drive to another area since the stream was to deep to cross.

 

Getting started in the thick stuff.  This shows 2″-3″ gowth but it got up to 6″ in most of the areas.

 

 

A couple of days and it looks like a field again. 

 

 

What can we mow? Here are saplings 4″-7″

This was cleared for a new home site, the mulch was left coarse to make raking and removal easier.  We can clear an acre of this type growth in a day.

 

2008 jobs – Briar removal

Yard surrounded by briars and various brushy growth.

 

After mowing.

 

 

After removing some trees too.

 

Wildlife Habitat and some Wildlife

3.8 acres of dense growth, Autumn Olive, Honeysuckle, Multi Flora Rose and Cherry as big as 8″ but most in the 5-6″ range.

I did not take any pictures on day one or two, this is early morning day 3 looking at finished area.

 

The frost is still visible in the shadow of my truck.  I have about 1/2 an acre to go.

A few pictures with the machine for a better perspective of brush and sapling size.  This was one of the easier sections.

Final pictures, the machine is park near the mid point of the field with pictures from both sides.

This little guy showed up on day one and every day he’d come by to see how I was doing.  I name him “Yogi”.

Right before I left he came back for a final check of my work.  There will be plenty of mice living in this field as soon as the grasses grow in.

Some days I really like my job.

I don’t know if it was the great fall weather or these old farm fields but I really enjoyed myself cleaning up this area.  Some field mowing and some mulching. 

The first day was mowing with a 60″ Brush Cat, I was impressed and could cut faster than I thought.  I was using a GPS and could move along at 7 mph while cutting.  

 

 

I used the Fecon mulch attachment to clean up a few old apple trees that had been overtaken by vines.

And another.

The final product of the Fecon still amazes me…