Land clearing in
Swanton & Enosburg, Vermont
Clearing work around Swanton & Enosburg runs to large rural properties, farms, field reclamation, and boundary access.
Estimate clearing cost↗The surface around Swanton & Enosburg is river alluvium and lake clay in the lowlands, till east toward the hills. Very flat, very wet, very productive ground in the lowland: good production when conditions allow and completely unworkable when they do not, with little in between. Long field approaches, generally wide. The constraint is bearing capacity, not width. Swanton reviews any excavation, filling or regrading on slopes of 15 percent or more, prohibits development on slopes over 25 percent, and protects a 50-foot buffer along every river and stream. Frozen ground is the working season on the lowland parcels; there is no dry-summer alternative on the wettest of them. Long, wide field approaches are rarely the constraint on this lowland; bearing capacity across river-clay ground is, so a dry-ground confirmation matters more than a width measurement.
How does the Missisquoi lowland affect clearing around Swanton and Enosburg?
Checked 2026-09-01
| Factor | On the ground here |
|---|---|
| Landform | Missisquoi River lowland and the farm country east of it |
| Elevation of workable ground | roughly 100–700 ft |
| Watershed | Missisquoi River to Missisquoi Bay |
| Mobilization zone | Regional: Franklin County |
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Frost-free window | May 14 to October 1 |
| Snowfall per year | 83.3 in |
| Named rivers | Missisquoi River and Trout River |
| Named lakes and ponds | Adams Pond |
| Soils with bedrock within 40 in | 43% |
| Hydric (wetland-type) soil | 17% |
| Most extensive soil | Woodstock-Rock outcrop complex (37%) |
| Seasonal high water table within 20 in | 44% |
Swanton's slope review and riparian buffers
Swanton's land use and development regulations (July 2025) put steep slopes in section 3.12. Any excavation, filling or regrading on land with a slope of 15 percent or more is subject to Development Review Board site plan review, the board may require erosion control and stormwater plans prepared by a licensed engineer, and development is prohibited on slopes over 25 percent. On Swanton's Missisquoi lowland most ground sits well below those slope numbers, so the buffer lines in the next paragraph are the ones a farm-edge or brush job usually meets first.
Section 3.13 protects riparian buffers: all land within 50 feet of the top of bank of the main stem of any river or stream, within 10 feet of a drainage way, and within 250 feet of Lake Champlain's mean water elevation of 95.5 feet. The regulations require an undisturbed, naturally vegetated strip in those areas, and the board can widen it where rare species or significant natural communities are present. A clearing crew working a farm edge in Swanton should mark those lines before flagging the cut. Enosburg has its own bylaws, so this page's buffer widths are Swanton's.
Class II wetlands carry a 50-foot buffer zone
The Missisquoi lowland holds extensive mapped wetland, including some of the largest wetland complexes in Vermont, so the 50-foot buffer is a live question on parcels that are simply flat farmland to look at.