Land Clearing Services in Cincinnati, OH
Woods you can't walk into, back to ground you can use.
Brushcutrs is a father and son outfit from North Bend, just west of Cincinnati. We clear land with a mulcher, a grapple and a mini excavator, and we price it by the job.
Land clearing is the big version of what we do every week: taking ground that's been swallowed by honeysuckle, briars, cedar and dead ash and making it usable again. Most of it gets done with the mulcher. As the owner put it: "they're able to access land that they've never been able to access before. Like pretty much non-usable land really and making it usable land."
We're family owned, and we'd do this every day if we could. You deal with the same team from the first walk-through to the last pass of the mulcher.
Land clearing: what we do
Lot clearing
House pads, driveway paths and yards opened on wooded lots ahead of your builder, around Union, Burlington and Florence, KY.
Residential land clearing
Backyards, back acres and horse farm edges taken back from honeysuckle and briars, so you can use the land you already own.
What a land clearing job looks like with our machines
The main tool is a Kubota compact track loader with a Fecon forestry mulching head on the front. It chews standing brush, saplings and small trees into mulch right where they grow. A Fecon excavator mulcher reaches the spots a loader can't sit on, like a creek bank or the top edge of a ravine. The grapple picks up logs and anything too big to grind. The Kubota mini excavator handles the digging that sometimes comes after.
All of it is brand new and all of it is ours, so nothing waits on a rental yard. The owner's take: "We have the best equipment you can get. So he's pretty quick at it."
Pretty much non-usable land really, and making it usable land.
Brushcutrs owner
Land clearing and mulching versus push-and-burn
The old way to clear land is a dozer. Push everything into piles, scrape the topsoil along with it, then burn the piles or truck them off. It works, but it leaves bare dirt, smoking brush piles and a field that washes every time it rains.
Mulching skips most of that. Nothing gets pushed into piles and there's nothing to burn or haul for the brush itself. The topsoil stays where it is, and the roots of the trees you keep don't get torn up. On the clay hillsides around Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, keeping that ground covered matters.
- No burn piles to babysit or get a permit for
- No dump truck runs for brush and saplings
- Topsoil stays put instead of ending up in a pile
- Less rutting than a dozer on soft ground
What's left on the ground, stumps included
When we're done you've got open ground with a layer of shredded wood across it. That layer holds the soil on a slope, keeps the mud down and breaks down over time. You can walk it, mow it once it settles, or seed through it.
Stumps get handled as part of the job. We don't bring a separate stump grinder: "we just use the mulcher head to do it." We grind them down with the mulcher as we go, so you're not left with a field of knee-high stubs. Bigger logs get set aside with the grapple if you want firewood, or ground up if you don't.
Selective clearing: keeping the good trees
Clearing land doesn't have to mean clearing everything. Most of our customers want the junk gone and the good trees left: the big oaks, the walnut, the sugar maple that turns in October. A mulcher is a good tool for that because it works around a trunk without bulldozing the ground under it.
Walk the property with us and point out what stays. Flag it with ribbon if that's easier. We'll take out the honeysuckle, multiflora rose and dead ash around those trees and leave you a stand of timber you can actually see into.
How we price land clearing by the job
We don't charge by the hour or the day. In the owner's words: "I'm just going to do by the job, because that way if I get done in three hours, it doesn't matter." You get one number for the work before we start, and it doesn't climb because a machine ran long.
What moves that number is the ground itself: how many acres, how thick the brush is, how steep the slope runs, how easy it is to get a machine in, and how much you want left standing. Selective clearing around a lot of keepers takes more care than knocking down a solid wall of honeysuckle. We walk it and give you a free estimate.
Where we clear land
Northern Kentucky comes first. We clear land all over Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties, from Florence and Union out to Burlington, KY, and you'll find more on our Northern Kentucky land clearing page. We're about 25 minutes from Florence.
We also work across Cincinnati and Hamilton County, up toward Hamilton, OH, and over the state line into Lawrenceburg, IN, Aurora, IN and the Dearborn County hills of Southeast Indiana. Bigger jobs can take us as far as Lexington, KY.
What people call us for
Common land clearing projects
Building lots and home sites
Opening a house pad and driveway path on a wooded lot ahead of the builder. See our lot clearing services.
Backyards and back acres
Taking a backyard or the unused back half of a property back from honeysuckle. See residential land clearing.
Overgrown pasture
Cedar and briars creeping into an old field. Our forestry mulching for overgrown land puts it back in grass.
Trails, lanes and fence lines
Narrow, clean cuts through the woods for a fence, a trail or a shooting lane, done with brush clearing.
Drainage after the clearing
Once the ground is open, wet spots show up. Our light excavating work can trench and grade while the machines are already there.
Questions
Land clearing questions
What does land clearing cost per acre?
We don't price by the acre or the hour, we price the whole job. Acreage matters, but so do brush density, slope, machine access and how many trees you want kept. Two acres of open honeysuckle can cost less than one steep acre full of keepers, which is why we walk the ground before giving a number.
Is land clearing the same as forestry mulching?
Forestry mulching is the method, land clearing is the goal. On most of our jobs the mulcher does the bulk of the clearing, with the grapple and mini excavator filling in. Our forestry mulching page goes deeper on how the mulcher itself works.
Do you haul off the brush and trees?
Usually there's nothing to haul. Brush, saplings and small trees get ground into mulch and left on the ground as cover. Bigger logs can be stacked with the grapple for firewood or ground down too, depending on what you want.
Will the cleared ground grow back?
Some of it will try. Honeysuckle and multiflora rose resprout from the roots, so a cleared area left alone will start filling back in. Mowing, grazing or planting the ground keeps it open, and a light touch-up pass is much easier than the first clearing.
What time of year is best for clearing land?
We clear year-round, Monday through Friday. Late fall and winter are good because the leaves are down and you can see the trees you want to keep. The thing that slows us down is soaked clay in a wet spring, so we schedule around the worst of it.
Where we do land clearing
Northern Kentucky first, then Greater Cincinnati, Southeast Indiana and out to Hamilton, Lexington and Georgetown, KY.
Ready to get it cleared?
Call or text us, or send the form. We'll walk the ground with you and give you one price for the job.
