Land Clearing and Forestry Mulching in Ohio: Lot Clearing, Brush and Honeysuckle Removal Statewide

Nine jobs, one price sheet, two yards. Honeysuckle woodlots, fencerows and farm lots going to houses are the lead work. Forestry mulching does most of it.

• Professional land clearing: woodlot understory, fencerows, old pasture, from $1,200 an acre.
• Forestry mulching services: skid steer $2,500 a day, 300-hp machine $3,900 a day plus transport.
• Lot clearing for a new house: quarter-acre $1,700 flat, half-acre one day, $2,500.
• Brush clearing: multiflora rose, autumn olive, dense brush on pasture and fence lines.
• Stump grinding: $4 per inch of diameter, $150 minimum per stump.
• Tree clearing and tree removal: dead ash, box elder, callery pear, inside the Indiana bat window.
• Site preparation and dirt work: grubbing at $160 an hour, rough grade for a pad or driveway.
• Bush hogging: $60 to 90 an acre, $400 minimum, when you only need to mow it.

We do not pour concrete, drill wells, set septic or take down houses. I know people who do. Pick the service and send the form.

Honeysuckle is on nine of every ten lots we price. Amur honeysuckle under every woodlot edge, green from March to November. Multiflora rose and autumn olive own the old pasture. Let a fencerow overgrow five years and callery pear owns it, and the thorns eat tires. Dead ash stands in every woodlot the emerald ash borer crossed. Those are the invasive species and the invasive brush that set the price on overgrown property.

Density is the first price driver. A honeysuckle understory you can walk through runs $1,200 an acre. Dense brush you cannot see through runs toward $2,000. Dead ash is the second. The tops drop before the trunk is touched, so a mixed woodlot climbs to $1,800 to 2,600.

Forestry mulchers grind brush, every sapling and small trees where they stand. The mulch layer, two to four inches, protects the soil and slows regrowth. Honeysuckle resprouts from the crown, which is why a bush hog alone fails against overgrowth. We mulch the crown to the dirt. Callery pear and tree-of-heaven get a cut-stump treatment within minutes or they come back triple.

Four regions, two yards, one 60-mile service circle around each. Central Ohio runs from the Delaware yard: Columbus, Delaware, Marysville, Newark, Lancaster, plus Knox and Morrow to the north. Land clearing in Columbus and land clearing near Columbus is half our calls, honeysuckle woodlots turning into subdivisions. The Southwest runs from Lebanon: Cincinnati, Dayton, Mason, Batavia, the thickest honeysuckle in the state. The Northeast has no yard. Cleveland, Akron, Canton, Medina and Lorain sit 95 to 115 miles from Delaware, so transport is billed and two-day jobs make the trip pay. The Northwest, Toledo, Perrysburg and Bowling Green, is the same deal at 105 to 130 miles. North Central Ohio, Mansfield and Mount Vernon, falls inside the Delaware circle. Frozen ground is the season in all four. Mud comes earliest on the lake plain.

Delaware County pulled 1,637 single-family permits in 2025, 1,119 of them in the townships. Franklin 1,829, Lorain 949, Warren 838, Clermont 772, by the Census Building Permits Survey. Those are the lots we clear, quarter-acre infill to one-acre township lots. A quarter-acre infill lot is $1,700 flat. A half-acre lot is one day with the skid steer, $2,500. One acre of callery pear with the stumps out runs $2,800 to 5,000, residential land clearing to dirt.

Clearing for residential pads is where the pad years pay off. The builder needs frost depth of 32 to 36 inches and no stumps rotting under the slab. On a half-acre lot in Plain City last winter the ground was frozen eight inches down. One day, no ruts, $2,500, and the builder staked it the next week. Send the plat and photos and I price it the same day.

December through February is the best window in the state. Frozen ground carries a 300-hp mulcher without a rut, and there is no mud surcharge. The mulcher runs on frozen ground the way the Buckeyes run in November. March and April are mud. Crosby and Kokomo silt loam sits on till clay and holds water on top of it until May. A dozer ruts to the axle in April where tracks walked in January. Mud season adds a day or we wait. June through September is dust and hard clay, normal rate.

The lake-plain clay around Cleveland and Toledo is the wettest in Ohio and drains last. The fragipan in Clermont County perches water two feet down all spring. Farm fields open after harvest in late October and close at planting. Tile lines run 30 inches down and nobody marks them; we find them with the bucket. Tell me the month and I tell you what the ground will do.

Hauling or burning is the first question on every lot. Usually hauling. Ohio EPA open burning rules (OAC 3745-19) ban open burning inside corporation limits, any city or village. Outside them, land-clearing waste burns only 1,000 feet or more from a neighbor's house, with written notice to the EPA district office first. ODNR Division of Forestry adds the hours: no outdoor burning 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. in March, April, May, October and November. So most lots are mulch or haul-off at $600 to 1,100 a load.

Wet ground is the second question. Ohio EPA isolated wetland permits run three levels: Level 1 up to half an acre of Category 1 or 2 wetland, Level 2 to 3 acres, Level 3 above that. Streams go to USACE, Huntington District south, Buffalo District north. Fill triggers the permit, not clearing, so we mulch the wet pocket and leave the dirt alone. Disturb an acre for a pad and the NPDES permit kicks in: SWPPP, silt fence, county SWCD review. I wrote those plans for fourteen years.

Township zoning (ORC 519) needs no permit to clear acreage. A pad needs the county building department permit and a township zoning certificate; agriculture is exempt under ORC 519.21. Trees over 3 inches on tracts over 1 acre get cut October 1 to March 31 for the USFWS Indiana bat unless a survey clears the site. OUPS 811 gets called 48 hours before grubbing. Ask me which of these touches your lot.

Figure $1,200 to 5,000 an acre in Ohio. Prices are based on acreage, what grows on it, and what the ground does the week we come.

• Skid steer forestry mulcher: $2,500 a day, transport included within 60 miles of Delaware or Lebanon. Stems to about 8 inches.
• Dedicated 300-hp mulcher: $3,900 a day plus transport. Stems to about 12 inches.
• Honeysuckle and brush mulching: $1,200 to 2,000 an acre by density.
• Mixed woodlot understory, honeysuckle under maple and oak with dead ash: $1,800 to 2,600 an acre.
• Full clearing to dirt with stumps out: $2,800 to 5,000 an acre.
• Stump grinding: $4 per inch of diameter, $150 minimum. Ten or more stumps, we price the day.
• Dozer or excavator grubbing: $160 an hour with operator.
• Haul-off and cleanup: $600 to 1,100 per 10-yard load.
• Mud season, March and April: adds a day or we wait. Frozen ground: no surcharge.

Two jobs from the log. Three acres of honeysuckle woodlot outside Sunbury, Delaware County: a day and a half with the skid steer, $3,800. Six acres of EAB-killed ash over honeysuckle in Medina County, February, frozen ground: two days with the big mulcher, $7,800. Dead ash tops come down first, which is why that job was not $5,400. Call (740) 729-8625 or send the form with photos. I email a budget range and two dates before the end of the day.

Four steps, and I handle the first two myself. One: send the form with photos of the thicket, the access, anything wet. Two: I email you a budget range and two dates before the end of the day. Three: a free on-site estimate inside 60 miles of a yard. I walk the lot with you, flag the wet pockets, note the bat window and the mud-season rule, and write the price. Four: the crew brings equipment designed for the ground that week, works the days quoted, logs days and loads, and leaves a mulch layer or a clean haul. Insured crews, every job. That is the whole service.

Nothing is cleared that you did not point at. Creek side first or road side first is your call. Fallen trees from the 2024 and 2025 storms come out too; FEMA covers public roads, not your lot. Call (740) 729-8625 if photos are not your thing and we go from there.

Eighteen county pages, each with that county's soil, permit office and price examples. We help property owners in all of them.

• Central: Franklin (Columbus), Delaware (Delaware, Powell, Sunbury), Union (Marysville, Plain City), Licking (Pataskala, Johnstown), Fairfield (Lancaster, Pickerington), Madison (London).
• Southwest: Warren (Lebanon, Mason, Springboro), Butler (Monroe, Liberty Township), Hamilton (Cincinnati, Harrison), Clermont (Batavia, Milford, Loveland), Montgomery (Dayton, Miamisburg), Greene (Beavercreek, Xenia).
• Northeast: Lorain (Avon, North Ridgeville), Medina (Medina, Brunswick, Wadsworth), Summit (Akron, Hudson), Stark (Canton, Massillon, North Canton).
• Northwest: Lucas (Toledo, Sylvania), Wood (Perrysburg, Bowling Green).

Private landowners, builders and utility companies get the same sheet. Commercial projects over an acre carry the NPDES plan. Knox, Morrow, Pickaway, Miami and Clark sit inside the circles too.