Forestry Mulching & Land Clearing in Boone County, MO

In the bluff country — Rocheport, Hartsburg, the ground running down toward the Katy Trail and the river — the work is slope work. Timber is oak-hickory with cedar filling every opening, and the draws grow honeysuckle thick enough to stop you walking. The reason mulching is the right tool here rather than a dozer is erosion: this ground moves when it is left bare, and a mulch layer holds it through the first hard rains after clearing.

On the north end around Centralia, Sturgeon and Hallsville the ground is flatter and the work changes character. Here it is fence lines that have lost a foot a year to cedar, field edges that have crept into the field, and pasture where the grass stand has thinned out under cedar cover. Mulching in place keeps the sod intact, which is the whole point when the objective is recovering a grass stand rather than starting one over.

Ashland and the southern corridor sit between the two. This is some of the fastest-growing residential ground in the county, and the jobs there skew toward building-site clearing and driveway corridors on acreage lots — with the timber edge kept for a screen.

Eastern red cedar is the common thread across the whole county. It colonises anything not mowed or grazed, shades out what grows underneath, and on the north end it is the reason a pasture that carried cattle twenty years ago will not carry them now. Cedar does not resprout once cut, which makes it one of the more satisfying things to clear — cut it and that stem is finished for good.