Land clearing in Mulberry.

Mulberry is phosphate country — a Polk County town with mining land, ranch pasture and retired grove ground all within a few minutes of the middle of it. The parcels here are working land rather than subdivision lots: pasture that has gone to brush, groves that stopped being worked, roads and lanes grown shut, and larger acreage where the owner wants it opened back up or prepared for something else. We clear that kind of ground, and in town we clear the ordinary lot as well. The soil is Polk sand, often over reclaimed or worked ground, and it grows whatever it is left to grow: palmetto, scrub oak, dog fennel and young pine over pasture, volunteer growth between grove trees, and heavy brush along fence lines and on ground that has been left alone for years. Mulching is the usual answer on the larger parcels, because the material goes back into the ground instead of onto a trailer, and the surface left behind can be mown and driven on. Work here is usually about access and structure before it is about clearing: fence lines reopened, ranch lanes and gate positions cut, a pad graded for a barn or a building. On grove ground the trees that stay are usually worth keeping, so the understory and the dead and volunteer material come out and the kept trees are left standing. Where a parcel is being taken out of groves altogether, it is cleared as a block. Properties near the phosphate land and the lakes and ponds in the area can carry frontage worth opening up, and clearing bank growth back from the water is work we do. Work inside a regulated protection area, and the environmental permitting around one, is not something we take on. Distance is the other factor on these parcels: long runs to the work area and gates that have to be worked around. Access and haul distance are real cost drivers, which is why we look at the property before quoting.

The work here is grove ground, ranch pasture and larger acreage: clearing, mulching, fence lines, lanes and pads for barns and buildings.