Land clearing · forestry mulching · stump work · Birchbank & Tamarack Junction
From woodlot to housepad without a single burn pile.
Birchbank turns standing brush, honeysuckle and second-growth into a mulched, grubbed, seed-ready lot in one pass — no smoke, no charred stumps, no import of gravel to replace the topsoil a dozer would have scraped away. The trees you want kept are flagged before the machine starts; the ground you are left with is ground you can build on.
Select-cut mapping
The lot is walked and flagged before any iron moves: keepers marked, invasives marked, and the machine corridors planned around the root zones of the trees you are keeping. A cleared lot that lost its best maples to save an afternoon is not cleared — it is diminished.
Forestry mulching
A tracked mulcher eats brush and small trees where they stand and leaves the chip on the ground it came from — erosion control, moisture hold and soil food in one pass. Nothing is pushed to a pile, nothing is burned, nothing is hauled.
Held until the green takes
Silt fence above every cut, wattles on the slopes, and the mulch itself as armor — inspected after every rain until vegetation passes the coverage test. The lot does not get handed over bleeding sediment into the ditch.
Why mulch instead of push
The chip stays because the chip is worth more here
A dozer clearing the same lot scrapes six inches of topsoil into the brush pile and sells you six inches of gravel to replace it — the lot pays twice for the same ground. The mulcher leaves the soil in place under two inches of its own vegetation, which is why a mulched lot is softer to build on in year one and greener in year two than a scraped one ever gets. Haul bills drop, burn permits vanish, and the coulee stops smelling like a campfire for a month.
The sequence
How a woodlot becomes a lot
Five moves, the same on a two-acre homesite as on a forty — the only variable is how far apart they happen, and whether the keepers need more ribbon than usual.
Walk & flag
Keepers ribboned, invasives marked, corridors planned. The lot is decided on foot before it is touched by machine.
Mulch the stand
Brush and second-growth chipped where it stands, the chip spread as it is made — one pass, no piles.
Stump the footprint
Grind or push only inside the actual build envelope; the rest of the stumps stay as structure for the soil.
Grade the envelope
The pad cut and graded to the plan, topsoil kept, and cut-and-fill balanced so nothing rides to a pit.
Hold & green
Fence, wattles and seed — inspected after every rain until the coverage test passes and the permit closes.
2025 — 2026
The cut wall
Six lots from the last two seasons, photographed at the coverage test rather than at the moment of maximum destruction. A clearing photo that shows fresh dirt is a photo of a problem; these show mulch, fence and green.
Grind in place
The grinder takes the stump eight to ten inches below grade and leaves the chip in the hole it made — no pit, no haul, no imported fill. For stumps inside the mowing lines of the finished lot, it is the only answer that does not create a second job.
Push & haul
The dozer answer, for stumps the grinder cannot swallow: pushed to the edge, bucked for firewood length, roots stumped-out and the pits backfilled with clean fill and compacted. It roughs the lot harder and it is sometimes the only tool that fits the schedule — the walk says which.
Leave them standing
Outside the build envelope, a stump is free soil structure: it holds the slope, feeds the fungi and disappears on its own schedule. We grind what the mowing plan needs gone and leave the rest — a cleared lot does not have to look like a parking lot to be buildable.
The record
Eleven seasons, counted in acres
The figures a clearing contractor can honestly count are acres, burns avoided and permits closed clean — everything else is weather. These three are from the yard book, which sits on the counter and disagrees with nobody.
Three quotes wanted to bulldoze our woodlot, burn the brush and sell us back gravel for the topsoil they would have scraped away with it. Birchbank flagged the maples, ate the honeysuckle where it stood, and left us a lot that mowed like a park the next July. The building inspector asked who cleared it — he wanted the number for his own place.
Erosion control
The lot is not done until it is green
Cleared ground is a promise made to the coulee below it. Silt fence goes in above every cut before the mulcher starts, wattles hold the slopes through the first storms, and the seed goes on while the machines are still on site — because the week nobody inspects is the week the rain does. We hold the controls to the coverage test, not to the calendar.
The clean-permit clause
If a notice of violation names a control we installed, the repair, the fine and the re-inspection are ours. Eleven seasons, zero notices — the clause is cheap because the work it insures is careful.
Before the iron rolls
Questions from the tree line
The four every woodlot call starts with. If yours is not here, the yard line runs seven to five, and the person on it has flagged maples in your township.
What can the mulcher actually handle?
Brush, honeysuckle, buckthorn and trees to roughly eight inches in one pass, and larger timber to about a foot with a slower bite. Past that the saw crew comes first and the mulcher cleans the stand — which is also how we keep the keepers unscarred. Anything sold as “clear the whole forty in a day” is selling you a scraped lot.
Does mulch attract termites or kill grass?
Neither, in the amounts a mulcher leaves: two inches of coarse chip, spread where it is made, breaks down into soil inside two seasons and shades out exactly the invasives you wanted gone. Problems come from piled chip — deep, hot, anaerobic — which is one more reason we spread as we go and never build piles.
Can you clear around the trees we are keeping?
That is the default, not the upgrade. Keepers are ribboned on the walk, the machine corridors run outside their root zones, and nothing heavier than a wheelbarrow crosses the drip line. A clearing outfit that cannot work around a tree is only a clearing outfit in the legal sense.
What does the lot look like the day you leave?
Mulched, fenced and seeded — softer than you expected and greener than any dozer job, with the build envelope grubbed and graded and the rest left standing structured. If you want the whole forty park-mowed, that is a second season of passes and we will quote it honestly; if you want it buildable and quiet, you are there the day we load.
Woodlot walks booked inside two weeks, frost-out to frost-up · (555) 054-9138 · brush@birchbankgrade.example
Walk it before anything falls
Acres, what is growing, and what the finished ground has to carry. The walk is free, the keepers get ribboned on it, and the number that follows is written for the pass you actually need — not the pass that is easiest to sell. brush@birchbankgrade.example