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Rod: I'll vouch for everything you've said in this post. I once picked 21,000 tons of rock off 10 acres for a multi-national corperation. It was near Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and their engineer told me he wanted 2' of stone free soil on surface. This was 35' above sea level. I advised him, he best go and buy industrial sump pumping equipment, as we were going to be below sea level by the time we achived 2' of stone free soil. We pulled the rocks to surface with cultivators and chisel plows. The rockpicker we used was one of those 3 point hitch, side conveyor, continuous flow jobs built at Middleton, Nova Scotia. We hauled the rocks away with a Cat pull scraper behind a forestry skidder, and a dump truck. The dump truck only stayed under conveyor while scraper was gone to dump. Rock picker had to travel too slow for dump truck. The balance of time he loaded rocks in the truck too large for picker with front end loader. We lowered the entire 10 acres 3' and they gave up. It was not stone free by any means. They wanted me to disk it with my 146 Busg Hog. I said you guys buy your own disk, I'll pull it for you. Rock picking is one of the most expensive farm chores we do, doesn't matter whether you use labor or machine. That cost has reached a point, some land is no longer viable for ag crops. I watch the guys here in SW Ontario, they take 50 hp tractor, 12' trailer, 1/2 dozen young folk and they cover 50 acres in a day only getting a trailer load, far cry from my Dartmouth experience. In fact you can sell those rocks around here. I'll bet you never dreamed of that idea on Boularderie Island
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