i don't know about who to contact to remove it for you. i usually do this type of work myself, honestly it is pretty time-consuming, though. you might want to look in local newspaper/yellow pages? or you might look on bulletin boards in your town. it's a good idea to check with references.

but --- you might want to walk around the property and figure out what you have there. you might have some rare rose/shrubs/other plants. if you're not sure what it is, you can photograph it and there is a section of this web site to post photos and get help with plant identity. you never know what treasures you might have. and you could possibly move/incorporate them into new garden plans.

we've found several old plants on our property that we decided to preserve. another friend recently moved upstate full-time found a lot of treasures that were hidden beneath the overgrowth of neglect for who knows how long. i think it would be a bit of shame to eradicate everything without first getting some sort of inventory, because you might find that you have some treasures there. and the more plants you can save, the less money you'll have to spend on new plants, which might help with the expense of paying someone to tame it. or --- maybe a neighbor (or someone on this message board) might be looking for a hard-to-find plant that is putting up a good fight to survive in your overgrowth. if it is something you don't want, you could post a little something here and probably find someone who'll want to rescue it and give it a new home in their garden.

one more tip: take lots of before-and-after photos along the way. keep a record of the progress. it's fun to have a record of what it used to look like --- and look back at that a few years down the road.

good luck!
--robbie--

Thanks for the tips. The area that needs to be cleared used to be pasture, so it's mainly junk saplings, wild roses, and out of control viburnum that's reseeded from one huge bush we have. I wish there were some good plants in there! Right now it's a jungle!

good luck on your project --- don't forget the before-and-after photos!

keep well!
--robbie--

Try asking at your local hardware store; they often keep business cards of people who do this kind of work. Someone who cuts lawns in your area might do this as fill-in work at the end of the season.

Good idea, thanks!

A long time ago, when this place was poison ivy and wild hawthorn, I used to come up weekends with loppers and weed killer and spend the day at it. The trees and bushes were lopped and cut, the poison ivy was sprayed, working from the edges in. It took a while but it finally got done, if only on a temporary basis because in this climate, everything is just waiting for a chance to get a foothold. I have more poison ivy to spray today (the birds keep planting it), a couple of seedling black walnuts to cut down and there is always the bush honeysuckle, moving in where it isn't wanted. And wild grapes.
My parents used this field as a pasture and had it completely cleared - right now it looks like a woodlot with only the area directly around my house kept clear. This is a job that never ends!

You might try one or two goats. You can let them out in the pasture if it's really well fenced in, or tie them to a sturdy stake or fence post. They'd clear an acre pretty quickly.

I love the idea of goats, but I would hafta get the pigmy sort like I just saw at a roadside farm on route 23 east of Grand Gorge. They had bunches of babies, my favorite was an all tan, rookie about the size of my (now sainted)
Siamese cat. I guesss an acre would require about 20 of the little fellas. I cant imagine a sweeter scene.

Hey, I like that goat idea! Maybe I can convince my husband to get one! LOL

I'm wondering about the saplings and rose bushes, too, though.

Goats are very powerful regardless of their size. I have never known anyone who rented goats, but if you were prepared with a very good story and promised to keep them safe from harm - I think most any farmer would think this was an excellent idea.
They would do an amazing job on almost all the underbrush.
Not sure how many you would need; I'd get all of them. Each of the saplings would be 'cleaned up' from the ground to about 4 feet high. This would also help you so you wouldn't need to crouch so much when it was time to clear the saplings; much easier. Excellent and sensible solution to your clearing project !