Land Clearing in Rhodesdale, MD — Open Ground You Can Build On

When You Need This

You bought a lot and you cannot walk it. Brush, scrub pine, briars, vines and volunteer trees have taken over. The house spot is in there somewhere but the surveyor's stakes are hard to even find.

Or it is ground you already own that quit being useful. A fence line grew into a hedgerow twenty feet wide and cost you crop rows. A field edge is closing in. Trees along the lane are dropping limbs on trucks and shading the road so it never dries. A tree line came down in a storm and left stumps and wads of root.

The bad clearing jobs are the ones where somebody cut everything off at ground level and left the stumps. Two years later the ground is settling in every hole, and you cannot build a pad, a lane or a field on top of that.

How Steve Does It

First he walks it with you and marks what stays. A good shade tree by the house, a tree line for a wind break, a wet area to keep out of. He checks the setbacks and the property line so nothing goes over it, and looks for what hides in a hedgerow around here — old fence wire, posts, a scrap pile, a well head, a buried line. Utilities get marked before the machine starts.

He works with the 10-ton excavator and the skid steer on tires. Brush and small stuff come out with the thumb and the bucket, roots and all. Stumps get dug and pulled instead of cut off, because the root wad is what leaves the hole. He shakes the dirt out of the roots with the bucket so you are not throwing away good soil with the wood.

Material gets sorted as it comes out. Wood in one pile, dirt in another, trash and old wire separate. Piles go where you want them and where a truck can reach them, and he coordinates debris haul-off so the pile does not sit on your lot all summer.

Then he closes the ground back up, which is the part most people skip. Every stump hole and root void gets filled and packed in lifts so it does not settle later. He grubs off the remaining root mat, rakes out the leftover wood, and rough grades so water moves off instead of standing in the low spots he just opened up.

Cleared ground is bare ground, so stabilization matters. Silt fence and a stone entrance go in where the county wants them, and he seeds and straws what will not be built on right away so the first hard rain does not run your topsoil into the ditch. If a pad, a lane or a drain is going in next, he can go straight into it with the same machines instead of scheduling another outfit.

What It Costs in Rhodesdale

Acreage first, then how thick it is — light brush and heavy hedgerow with mature trunks are different days. Stump count and size, because a big root wad is real machine time. What comes out of the ground besides wood: old fence wire, posts, buried junk, an old slab. How much fill the holes take. What happens to the debris, since coordinated haul-off costs more than piling and burning if the county allows it. Wet ground slows everything and sometimes means waiting for a dry stretch. Then seed, straw, silt fence and the entrance if the job needs them.

Estimates are free, and Steve would rather walk it than guess over the phone. Photos never show what is under the brush.

Why Choose Marshy Hope

Steve Hackett owns the business and runs the machine. Fifteen years in the trade, six of them working for himself out of Rhodesdale. He carries a $1,000,000 general liability policy and will send the certificate to you or your builder before he starts. Estimates are free, and you hear back the same day or the next one. One crew handles it from dirt to concrete, so nothing gets dropped in the handoff.