We had Brad and his crew out last October and we took out 200-300 lodge polls on our back hillside. It had never been cleared and it was dog hair thick with pines.

Here is what it looked like last year before they started.





and a few more pictures from last year


it's a STEEP hillside




see how much more open it is? and this was last October. The trees now have some room to be healthy. A much better defense once the beetles get here.




This year, it was about getting the rest of the slash down and all the dead falls that are technically not on our property, but in our view and a fire danger to us. The adjacent property in undeveloped and it littered with thousands of dead falls.

I have been dragging down slash for the past week, on a tarp

Here; you can see some of my piles up on the hillside



and once down at the bottom - those are the chip piles from last October



starting to wench down my small dead falls. We took some HUGE logs down off the hillside today. I didn't get any pictures of all the logs coming down.



This is about 1/10 of the big logs that came down








after I recover a bit more; I need to do some cleanup of the sled run and I'll take some "after pictures"

The hillside is much more open and I plan to toss a bunch of wildflower seeds out there!

I highly recommend Brad and his crews at Splintered Forest. http://splinteredforest.com/index.htm

Thanks for posting this. Sounds like they do amazing work!

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" I'll try anything once, twice if I like it, three times to make sure. " Mae West

yes m'am. I am so thrilled to FINALLY finish off this hillside. It was so "trashy" at the crest of the hill. I was just up there raking... lawdy...it's humid out...

how expensive are they?

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" I'll try anything once, twice if I like it, three times to make sure. " Mae West

All the work today was under $300 and trust me it was A LOT of work. Now, my husband is out there with them with his chain saw cutting and bucking trees, so that helps save on their time as well. Those guys were soaking wet when done, one of them, took his t-shirt off and literally squeezed tons of water (sweat) out of it. Crazy. Good thing that they had another dry/clean shirt in the truck. We had a lot of decayed stuff, so when it hit the chippers it was like DIRT coming out - nasty

Brad will come out and give you an estimate if you need that. That way you could budget it out. Last fall, we planned on one to two days of work. This year, we estimated 2-4 hours and I am not sure how long they were here. I was not near a clock when they pulled out, but I think it was close to 3.

They also have a deal where they can do a neighborhood cleanup if you had neighbors that you wanted to work with to get stuff done.

Amazing transformation. Thanks for the pictures. They do good work.

We watched some remove bushes across from the Yellow Barn in Aspen Park awhile back and it took them an entire week with many people, mostly standing around, to do what could have been done in a day.

Splintered forest should have worked over there. It looks really good.

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IN NOVEMBER 2014, WE HAVE A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY TO CLEAN OUT THE ENTIRE HOUSE AND ONE-THIRD OF THE SENATE! DONT BLOW IT!

“When white man find land, Indians running it, no taxes, no debt, plenty buffalo, plenty beaver, clean water. Women did all the work, Medicine man free. Indian man spend all day hunting and fishing; all night having sex. Only whit man dumb enough to think he could improve system like that.” Indian Chief Two Eagles

I think those were all volunteers that worked across from the yellow barn, for the church that puts on the Friday night movies. If you are working for free, there isn't a rush .

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Aut inveniam viam aut faciam

Good to know archer. They certainly didn't look professional. I am not a professional but could have managed it faster. Guess it depends on the shape you are in. Nice of them to do it.

I must say I am impressed with Splintered Forest work ethic. Looks like they get lots done in a short period of time.

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IN NOVEMBER 2014, WE HAVE A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY TO CLEAN OUT THE ENTIRE HOUSE AND ONE-THIRD OF THE SENATE! DONT BLOW IT!

“When white man find land, Indians running it, no taxes, no debt, plenty buffalo, plenty beaver, clean water. Women did all the work, Medicine man free. Indian man spend all day hunting and fishing; all night having sex. Only whit man dumb enough to think he could improve system like that.” Indian Chief Two Eagles

Basically, when the chipper is turned on, the clock starts ticking. We have never felt "taken advantage of" with that billing process as they work their tails off. Now, to save money, you need to be ready and prepared. so for this trip, our readiness involved having the trees down and staged and all the slash down by the time they were ready to start tying up the bundles and winching them to the chipper. We also had two other guys here (they were taking the wood suitable for firewood) pulling dead falls out and over to the winch staging area to be winched down. Now, they can do all that, but if you have resources to get stuff ready to go, then they can stay focused on pulling down the trees and chipping them. They even talk about it on their website on how to save costs. It really is all in the preparation.