Land clearing in Lutz.

Lutz is the rural edge of north Hillsborough, on the line with Pasco County, and the property shows it: lots measured in acres rather than feet, wooded ground behind the road frontage, horse and hobby-farm parcels, and houses set well back from the street. Clearing here is larger-scale than a house-lot job and usually selective, because the trees are what makes the property worth having and the point is to take the growth out from under them and open the ground up. The land is flat to gently rolling and heavily wooded: pine and oak over palmetto, cypress and bay in the lower and wetter pockets, and thick understory everywhere the ground has not been worked. That understory is the work — it is what makes a parcel unusable, hides fence lines, blocks the drive and takes over a paddock. Clearing it out and leaving the canopy standing is the usual brief, and it changes the property more than taking trees down does. Equestrian and hobby-farm parcels add the usual structure: fence lines grown shut, lanes and gate positions lost, paddocks gone to brush, and often a pad needed for a barn or an outbuilding. On these parcels mulching in place is usually better than hauling, because the material goes back into the ground as a surface that can be ridden, mown and driven on. Drainage is the local caution. Ground here holds water in the low pockets and along the natural runs, and clearing it is planned so those lines still work afterwards. Where a parcel carries frontage on a pond or a creek, clearing growth back from the water is work we do — work inside a regulated protection area, and the environmental permitting around one, is not. Access is straightforward on most of these parcels, but long drives and soft ground in wet months are the two things we plan around.

We clear wooded acreage, open up understory, reopen fence lines and paddocks, and grade pads and driveways on equestrian and hobby-farm property.