Excavation Contractor in Germantown, NY

A river town built on farms and orchards

Germantown was settled in 1710 by Palatine Germans who set up camps along the east bank of the Hudson, and for most of the three centuries since it was farm country, known for apples, pears and cherries. Few of those orchards are still producing. What's left on a lot of properties is rows of old trees gone to brush, hedgerows full of stone and wire, and fields that haven't been cut in years.

The properties here run from old farmhouses with a barn or two, to newer homes built on pieces split off from bigger farms, to riverside places with steep banks behind them. Buyers often want part of the land opened back up for a house site, a garden, a horse paddock or just a view of the river. That's land clearing work, and on old farm ground it goes slower than people expect, because every hedgerow is really a rock pile with trees growing out of it.

How do you clear an old orchard for a house site or field?

Clearing an old orchard means cutting the trees, pulling each stump with its root ball, knocking the soil back off the roots, and filling and grading every hole so the ground settles evenly. Stumps left in the ground to rot will keep sinking for years, so pull them before you build, seed or mow.

Fruit trees have wide, shallow roots, and a row of them leaves a line of craters that needs to be filled with the right soil, not just pushed flat. Brush and trunks get piled for burning or chipping, or hauled off. If there's old fence wire grown into the trees, and along farm edges there usually is, it gets pulled so it doesn't wrap around a mower later. The finished ground should be graded smooth enough for whatever comes next, whether that's topsoil and seed or a foundation dig.

Long trenches to barns, wells and outbuildings

On a spread-out Germantown property, the barn, the workshop or a new detached garage can sit a few hundred feet from the house. Getting power, water or a data line out there means a long trench, and the route matters as much as the digging. It has to miss the septic tank and leach field, the well line, and any old clay drain tile left under the fields by earlier farmers.

Water lines go below frost so they don't freeze in February. Electrical conduit goes at the depth the electrician calls for, with warning tape above it. Justin lays out the run with you before digging and gets existing buried lines located and marked, then backfills and smooths the trench so you can mow over it. More on that on the utility trenching page.

Excavation in Germantown, NY near the river: clay, springs and ponds

Toward the Hudson the land breaks into bluffs, ravines and low spots, and the subsoil in many places is dense clay. That's a mixed blessing. Clay holds a pond well, so a wet corner of a field can often become a pond that keeps its water through August. The same clay keeps basements damp and turns a low part of the yard into a puddle every spring.

A test hole before any pond dig tells you what's down there and whether groundwater or a spring will feed it. For wet yards and fields, the answer is usually a shallow swale or a stone-and-pipe drain that carries water to a safe outlet instead of letting it sit. See pool and pond excavation and drainage and erosion control for how those jobs go.