From light mowing to high-production mulching, selective corridor work to broad reclamation, each scope starts with end use, constraints, and finish.
One-machine land reclamation that cuts, grinds, and returns vegetation to the ground as a protective mulch layer.
Remove dense brush, briars, vines, saplings, and volunteer growth from yards, fields, edges, and unmanaged acreage.
Selective or broad clearing for homesites, additions, views, access, agriculture, commercial planning, and property recovery.
Mechanical clearing and long-term planning for buckthorn, honeysuckle, barberry, multiflora rose, knotweed, phragmites, and other aggressive growth.
Slope-aware brush and vegetation management for hillsides, banks, utility approaches, views, and hard-to-reach terrain.
New trail corridors, reopened paths, woods roads, recreation loops, farm access, and inspection routes.
Open overgrown fence rows, survey access, farm boundaries, paddock edges, and perimeter maintenance routes.
Heavy mowing for grass, weeds, brambles, light brush, neglected fields, and recurring acreage maintenance.
Clear field edges, volunteer trees, brush, lanes, fence corridors, and neglected paddocks for the next agricultural step.
Selective brush removal, lower-canopy opening, and corridor planning for mountain, lake, field, road, and solar views.
Vegetation management for access roads, utilities, drainage, inspections, frontage, and maintenance corridors.
Mulching and cleanup of compatible downed limbs, tops, slash, brush tangles, and access-blocking growth after weather or logging.
Selective clearing for surveys, test pits, driveways, utility routes, building envelopes, drainage review, and civil work.
Defined-scope vegetation clearing for builders, property managers, utilities, associations, farms, and commercial landowners.
Planned mowing, resprout control, touch-up mulching, monitoring, seeding coordination, and access maintenance after clearing.
Mechanical reduction and multi-season management planning for common woody invasive shrubs across northern New England.
Vegetation clearing along private roads, driveways, culverts, ditches, embankments, and drainage infrastructure.
Trail, lane, field-edge, inspection-route, and selective vegetation work for recreation and habitat-management properties.
Selective brush, sapling, lane, fence, and equipment-access clearing for sugarbushes, orchards, and managed tree crops.
Selective clearing around upland pond approaches, meadow margins, field edges, and neglected transitions—subject to regulated-area review.
Checked 2026-09-01
There are twenty distinct clearing capabilities here, and choosing between them comes down to four things: the largest stem in the work area, the terrain, what has to be protected, and what the ground becomes afterwards. Forestry mulching processes standing woody growth in place and leaves the stumps; brush hogging maintains already-mowable ground; excavation removes roots and changes grade. Most real projects use more than one in sequence. The table below sets out what each capability handles and the planning range it runs at, so you can match the method to your ground before anyone quotes. None of these is priced by acreage alone — the largest stem and the access route move the number more than the size of the parcel does.
| Capability | Largest stem | Planning range |
|---|---|---|
| Forestry Mulching | 6–8 inches for most carriers | 0.4–1.5 acres per day |
| Brush & Underbrush Clearing | 2–4 inches typically | 0.5–2 acres per day |
| Land & Lot Clearing | Whatever the site holds — this scope selects methods rather than being limited to one | Not a single rate; a lot-clearing job is several scopes in sequence |
| Invasive Growth Removal | 4–6 inches | 0.3–1 acre per day, plus every follow-up visit the species requires |
| Steep-Terrain Land Clearing | Reduced from the flat-ground figure — expect 4–6 inches, because the limit is the machine's stability, not the head | 0.2–0.8 acres per day |
| Trail & Path Clearing | 4–8 inches within the corridor | 300–1,500 linear feet per day at a 6–10 foot corridor width |
| Fence-Line & Boundary Clearing | 4–6 inches, with the real limit being what is hidden in the row rather than what is growing in it | 500–2,000 linear feet per day |
| Brush Hogging & Field Reclamation | 1–2 inches. Above that the mower is the wrong tool and something will break. | 2–5 acres per day |
| Pasture & Farm Reclamation | 6–8 inches for the clearing pass | 0.5–1.5 acres per day for the clearing; the agronomic work runs on a season, not a day rate |
| Selective View & Vista Clearing | Selective by definition — the question is which stems, not how big | 0.2–0.6 acres per day |
| Right-of-Way & Access Clearing | 4–8 inches within the corridor | 500–2,500 linear feet per day depending on corridor width and traffic exposure |
| Storm-Damage & Slash Cleanup | Whatever came down — but only material that is already on the ground and not under tension | Highly variable; a day rate is usually more honest than an area rate on storm work |
| Pre-Construction Site Clearing | Whatever the approved plan area contains | 0.5–1.5 acres per day for the vegetation phase |
| Commercial Land Clearing | Site-dependent | Scoped by phase and documented per phase, not by a single day rate |
| Post-Clearing Maintenance | 1–3 inches — this scope exists to stop stems ever getting bigger than that again | 1–4 acres per day, and falling every year the interval is kept |
| Buckthorn & Honeysuckle Control | 3–5 inches | 0.3–1 acre per day for the initial reduction |
| Roadside, Ditch & Drainage Clearing | 3–6 inches within the corridor | 500–2,000 linear feet per day |
| Hunting-Land & Habitat Access | 4–8 inches in the corridors | 400–1,500 linear feet of trail per day, or 0.3–1 acre for openings |
| Sugarbush & Orchard Access Clearing | 3–6 inches in the lanes | 300–1,200 linear feet of lane per day |
| Pond, Meadow & Field-Edge Reclamation | 3–6 inches on the upland side of the marked limit | 0.3–1 acre per day, or 400–1,500 linear feet of edge |
Forestry mulching is one method — it processes standing vegetation in place and leaves the stumps. "Land clearing" is the outcome, which may use mulching, felling, excavation, grading and hauling in sequence. Mulching gets you visibility, access and usable ground; excavation is what removes roots and changes grade.
Start from what the ground has to become — walked on, mowed, grazed, built on, driven across, or seen through. That answer selects the method. The twenty service pages each state what that capability finishes and what it does not, so you can match your outcome to a scope.
It depends on the service. Forestry mulching handles roughly 6–8 inch stems for most carriers; brush hogging tops out around 1–2 inches; a full land-clearing scope handles anything by bringing in felling and excavation. The largest stem in your work area is the single most useful number to establish first.
By the day, not by the acre, because a crew day covers wildly different amounts of ground depending on stem size, density, slope, access and finish. Acreage alone cannot produce a number. The calculator weights the factors that actually move production and returns a planning range.
No. Photos and a calculator narrow the conversation and give a planning range. Access, hidden debris, wet ground, rock, larger stems and machine feasibility can only be confirmed on site, which is why a site review comes before a quote.
Vermont, northeastern New York and western New Hampshire, centred near Essex, Vermont, within roughly a two-hour mobilisation window. Coverage is screened address by address for access, project size and capacity — the service-area pages set out each market.
Usually frozen or firm ground: it carries a machine without rutting and leaves are off so a selective job can be marked. Mud season is the window to avoid. The exact answer depends on your soil, which is why each town page states the working window for its ground.
Not from one mechanical visit. Buckthorn, honeysuckle and most woody invasives resprout, and knotweed spreads from fragments. Invasive control is a multi-season programme of reduction, follow-up and often replanting — a single-visit price is a price for the wrong job.
Possibly, depending on wetlands, shorelands, the size of the earth disturbance, whether the land is enrolled in Current Use, and local bylaws. There is no single clearing permit. The permit field guides set out which question goes to which office in each state.
The landowner. Clearing across a boundary is a trespass with multiplied statutory damages in all three states, and a mulching head does not stop for buried utilities. Locate the line and call 811 before any machine moves — this is the landowner's to establish, not the contractor's.
It depends on the scope: compatible vegetation is usually mulched in place, or it can be stacked, chipped or hauled off. Stumps, oversize logs, soil, wire and contaminated material are separate decisions. Mulching in place costs nothing extra; hauling is a separate line.
Yes — selective work is normal, and it is slower than clearing an open block because the machine stops, repositions and works around each retained tree. Flag the trees to keep physically before the work, not on a plan, and expect the selectivity to show up in the production rate.
You get the finish you specified, plus regrowth in the first season because sunlight now reaches ground that was shaded. Almost every project needs a follow-up interval — annual on aggressive or invasive ground, every few years elsewhere — or it closes back in.
No. Green Mountain Landworks is a planning and referral service operated by AIXIS LLC. The clearing is carried out by independent contractors under their own contracts and insurance. The site's value is honest scoping and routing your project to a contractor who fits it.
Share the location, acreage, density, slope, access, photos, and intended outcome. We’ll turn the idea into a scope that can be evaluated on the property.
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