Aside from seaoat, anyone else own multiple acres of land?

found a place I plan to retire to

Make sure you save up for a good zero turn commercial tractor. As everybody knows over the years, I love John Deere tractors. Semi retirement has given me more time to cut back jungle and a zero turn will be your best investment. They are much more expensive, but acreage can be tough on a mower, and the best is what you should look for in a lawn mower.

Hey,
Ty yeah I see them but so pricey. What about a larger John Deere? I'm getting three acres soon.

IMA/Pace, we have very little land now, all sand and weeds, but in our former life in NW Connecticut we owned 9-1/2 acres on a quiet country lake.  (FYI we built the house there with our own four hands, which is how we accumulated the sweat equity to eventually purchase a leasehold here on PBeach.)  Fortunately, the Connecticut acreage was all wooded except for a little bit of wild grass front and rear of the house, and that's exactly how we liked it.  Wish you happy mowing in your retirement, whenever that comes.  Better you than us!

Ty, yeah it's been a long time dream to have a place in the country. Love the smell of cut hay when they are harvesting up in Jay/Baker. It'll be 3 years before I can build. Want the land paid off before I do so.

I do plan to garden. It might be hard to keep the deer out.

Remember that planting  a big garden is pretty easy.  You need to know what plants grow best next to each other.  Keeping it weeded and watered,etc, is the real work.  I once thought I would grow a lot of water melons.  I guess I planted maybe a acre of them.  Then I found out you have to turn them and keep them from getting soft spots.  My wife got sick and I really didn't have much time to fool with them  I only got a few good ones but i had a field of bad ones.  I plowed all of them under.  BUT  the next year they grew back and I had twice as many as before.  LOL  Big mess.  Not much of a farmer... But I did grow a jillion peppers and squash...

On 29 and I 10 there is a bobcat dealer where you can rent a bobcat and a brushcat for about 500 bucks, but I always ask them to deliver it saturday morning and use it through Monday. However, also If I could give you the best advice for panhandle land clearing and that is an outfit out of Alabama which is near North Escambia which does land clearing mulching and is the most amazing thing I have ever seen in land clearing. He could clear everything on two of your acres for about 1,599 and he can take down and grind pine trees up to eight inches. He leaves all this natural mulch, and the county does not consider it land clearing because you are not bringing in a dozer to tear out the roots. It is amazing what a piece of land looks like after he clears it, and I could maintain everything with just a regular lawn mower and never had the deck hit stumps. I think it is on the internet, and I apologize for not having his name, but all of that is in Florida.

Also, I always get a driveway permit for a culvert right from the get go and have Salter 3 c deliver some good red clay and some sandy fill to put over the same, and you get that from the transportation folks in Milton for about $200 permit fee. You need to make sure the county engineers have assigned your property a proper address and you get a letter for your tax parcel from them on the address. I usually go to the assessor and they will print a bigger map of your tax id with an pretty good photo of your 3 acres. Sketch where you think you want your house, and ask for a 1 foot elevation print out with the contours in another photo so you can determine the high points. You need to look at the FEMA flood panels and determine under the 10 year old higher requirements for a house in Santa Rosa county what your grade will be to the house. If you can purchase the lot and maybe clear an acre at a time it is better, and personally I always build a red clay base higher than the fema panels and do this slowly at the house site. Make sure you get any stumps and organic material out, and you can rent a mini excavator. You do not want to build your house over old tree roots and particularly pine root balls.

Once you close, start planing these things within your retirement budget. You can go with somebody like SS Steel if in Pensacola to build a good brick home on the site you develop. Do not let anybody tell you what you cannot do, and do not be afraid to make mistakes. Good initial drawings from the assessor's office photos will in the end save you a great amount of money.

I only got a few good ones but i had a field of bad ones.

I had the same problem with pumpkins. I went to the County ag people and they told me it would take a couple years, and it might be better to plant pasture grass for a couple years and then start small on your plantings. We plowed 2 acres with a Ford tractor and worked our asz off until we understood that farming is not easy.

Also, please check your zoning. If you are in an ag zone, you might want to think about going to Craigslist and getting about four goats. First, find out who will buy them at the end to slaughter them, and make sure you do not have feral dogs or coyote which can get to the goats. We are looking into it for one area of the islands which has a huge poison ivy problem, and goats love poison ivy. We however have coyotes, a report on a cougar, and now a report on a bobcat the size of a large dog.

The Ag people will give you the soil type of your tax parcel and can give you some advice on the garden.

I've got several acres, some cleared, some wooded. One thing to keep in mind is, whatever you have cleared is going to be a problem. You'll either have to use all your time keeping it cleared, or all your money paying someone else to do it. So, there can be drawbacks. But, it's nice not to have neighbors too close, and I do get to plant all the garden I want - tomatoes, corn, insanely hot peppers. I've started planting apple trees on some of the land, and have had pear trees and blueberry bushes for quite a while. I tried peaches and plums once but they require so much spraying they're hard to make a go of. Maintenance is always a factor. So far the pears have worked out the best -- I never have to do anything to 'em and they produce so many they break their own limbs.

My grandmother had three huge pear trees and my fondest memories are her making pear preserves. We would have those with our biscuits for breakfast all year long. I have always wanted to plant a pear tree and make pear preserves. Retired people, or in my case semi retired people need to keep busy with physical activities. You are right, once you clear land there is usually hard work involved in maintaining the same.

Thanks for all the good advice. I do have the number for a man who clears land and mulches the pines just like you described. It might be the same guy.

Thanks for all the good advice. I do have the number for a man who clears land and mulches the pines just like you described. It might be the same guy.


If it is he is a great guy and has made quite an investment in that equipment. He works with his son and has a modified Bobcat 300 with bulletproof glass in front of the operator and the machine is rigged with heavy duty tow lines which can get him out of wet ground. Take the day off when he mulches your property, it is amazing, but make sure stand way back and wear safety glasses because the grinder rigged on the front is incredibly powerful. He has fair prices and he does what he said he would do. I used to bushhog with my bobcat or have a bulldozer with a soil rake tear everything out of the ground. Very environmentally unfriendly. You have years to do this right, and it took me more than a decade to work on my one natural project. I would suggest the winter or fall so you can let the material dry into cold weather so when burning some of the bigger debris you are not dealing with snakes.....reaching down to pick something up with a snake present is no fun. Get your address on the parcel assigned as soon as possible, and get your culvert permit as soon as possible. It is really very satisfying turning inhospitable jungle into to beautiful natural vistas which can allow a variety of trees, gardens, ponds, and grasses.

2seaoat wrote:Thanks for all the good advice. I do have the number for a man who clears land and mulches the pines just like you described. It might be the same guy.


If it is he is a great guy and has made quite an investment in that equipment.  He works with his son and has a modified Bobcat 300 with bulletproof glass in front of the operator and the machine is rigged with heavy duty tow lines which can get him out of wet ground.   Take the day off when he mulches your property, it is amazing, but make sure stand way back and wear safety glasses because the grinder rigged on the front is incredibly powerful.  He has fair prices and he does what he said he would do.   I used to bushhog with my bobcat or have a bulldozer with a soil rake tear everything out of the ground.  Very environmentally unfriendly.   You have years to do this right, and it took me more than a decade to work on my one natural project. I would suggest the winter or fall so you can let the material dry into cold weather so when burning some of the bigger debris you are not dealing with snakes.....reaching down to pick something up with a snake present is no fun.    Get your address on the parcel assigned as soon as possible, and get your culvert permit as soon as possible.  It is really very satisfying turning inhospitable jungle into to beautiful natural vistas which can allow a variety of trees, gardens, ponds, and grasses.

So, you don't think I should clear later this summer? I have an easement road to use which is part of my property. I have decided to use it instead of building a driveway over a culvert since the neighbor who uses the easement on my property also maintains it. I think I am going to only have him clear 3/4 to just 1 acre of it. It will help ensure some privacy. Got any ideas for a local shed business that is reputable? I have looked at RNKBUILDINGS.COM in Pace/Milton.

My husband and I -- a lot younger at the time -- cleared our wooded land for the house site all by ourselves with nothing but a chain saw and a heckuva lot of hard work -- weekends, holidays, vacation time -- as we both were still working full time for a living and lived 45 minutes away from the jobsite. After closing on the land purchase in late June, we did most of the clearing in the month of July because we wanted to get started on the shell before the Connecticut snows set in. It was hot. It was buggy. It was brutish. But we did what we had to do -- and we became intimately connected to our land.