Hire an agricultural contractor to come in , spray it with appropriate weedkiller with the proper equipment, experience and certification to spray chemicals.
The contractor will also be able to plough/cultivate it for you ... or were you going to do it all with a garden fork?
Please take a look at the link to local smallholders association that I posted earlier. There you will meet people who have been where you are and learned the lessons and they're usually very eager to help with advice and even equipment.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
To clear the land in one go you needtractors and heavy machinery. Sprinkling salt and vinegar isn't going to cut it as anyone with an ounce of common sense would easily work out (sorry!) Given the expense of buying the heavy machinery required you would be better off hiring contractors to come in and do the job for you.
If you're doing it yourself, you are best off tackling a small section at a time and working outwards. I doubt you'll ever clear the lot, or even need to, so you could put the rest of the site into woodland by planting trees. Woodland can be productive too, you could be in a position to sell chestnuts, hazel hurdles, and timber.
"What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour".
If you want to clear 10 acres of overgrown land you will need machinery, weed killer will not help you, you need a bush hog that will chop everything down and turn it into chips, you'll probably need a stump grinder to remove any larger stumps. You need around 1/2 an acre to be vegetable self sufficient.
Once you have the land cleared it will instantly start regrow, so you need some way to keep it down before you bother wasting time clearing it. The easiest way to do this is to rent it out to someone I rent out 3 acres to a neighbouring farmer, he ploughes sows and sprays it meaning I don't have to think about that area, he pays me a little over the property taxes for the privilege of helping me out! But people will only rent usable land, so no large roots, not to steep etc etc.
By all means get the entire area cut, but you will need to get it cut at least once a year to stop it turning into scrub. Decide where you want your garden, you will not need more than half an acre for that and that allows space to grow all your potatoes and a 4 year rotation as well. (in a British climate) Half an acre is a full time job when it's full of vegetables by the way.
As for animals if you have no experience start with chickens and for just you you only need 2-3, that will keep you swimming in eggs all year.
I have 7 acres in total and that is way more than one family needs to produce everything they can.
What you should do now (assuming you have overgrown fields) is walk the land and find any hidden obstacles, old watering troughs, fences etc, mark them well and get in a contractor to cut everything down while the ground is dry enough for machinery. spend the winter making plans and clearing your kitchen garden. Roundup can help you there, as can silage plastic. I would cut the area let it regrow 2-3cm spray it and then cover with plastic, that should kill the perennial weeds and catch many of the seeds as they germinate. You will still get a ton of new weeds in spring but there really is nothing you can do about that other than get the hoe out.
I admire your enthusiasm, but you really need to take a breath and think this through . 10 acres is an enormous area to deal with, and even if you cleared the whole lot in one go by whatever means, you will then be faced with what to do with it before Winter sets in. My advice is to set aside 2 acres at the absolute most, that is more than enough to start with (personally l'd start with one acre, or even just standard allotment size would be even better). Put up some temporary fencing (try Freecycle etc if budget is an issue) and concentrate on that section only.
The first thing you need to make a firm decision on, is how you clear the land. As has been said previously, most people on here are not keen on chemicals , especially where food is to be grown, but if you're not going down the organic route, it's your land and it's up to you. Just out of curiosity l looked at the cost of clearing land and found this https://gradedtradesmen.co.uk/price/how-much-does-land-clearing-cost
It may be more cost effective to either hire a digger or ask a local farmer/landowner if they would help or advise. People are usually happy to help, alternatively you could try your local Facebook group.
I feel if you try and do 10 acres in one go you will end up disheartened. Better to do it in stages and get the one part up and running and producing food for you, then move on to the next one. Apart from anything else, it will show you how long it takes, and what the pitfalls and successes will be.
Yes @Hostafan1 is right - you seem to want to kill everything in sight. Some bush areas are necessary for ecology and also to mark off a paddock where you are growing crops. Is there a stream running through the property? Needs some bush around a stream. You'll probably want to have an orchard in one part if you wish to be self-sufficient - this will take 3 years to establish before you get fruit. We took on 15 acres which we didn't inherit and had to pay back the mortgage as well as the finance to get the place growing vegetables. It's back breaking, hard slog and many many tears. Hope your suit of armour is in good nick. You have some good advice - everyone says "don't walk before you can run" - start with a 2-acre block at a time. You won't make the same mistakes as with the second block of 2 acres and so forth. Softly softly catchee monkey. Cheers Tui
Buying weed killer from Wilko makes it obvious you’re at the very bottom of a steep learning curve.
I am only slightly better informed but, there again, I do not need to be as I am not in your position. My immediate thinking is that one acre is quite sufficient for your ambitions of self sufficiency. Any more land than that will require the buying or hiring of expensive machinery, labour and disposables.
Then if you did clear all 10 acres unless you kept on top of it which is very unlikely you’ll be faced with a tangle of dock, ragwort, thistles, brambles and scrub within a year or two.
So, on the 9 or so acres you can do little with, you could plant trees and run it as a wildlife sanctuary. Here you could seek advice from local wildlife organisations but just buying and planting the trees is going to cost many hundreds, even thousands of £s. That certainly does not square with doing things on a budget. You could, I suppose, donate the land to the wildlife trust and let them takeover giving you a very nice amenity immediately next to your retained plot. Or you could manage the woodland yourself, selling timber etc but that is not going to give you a return for a decade or so. In that time period you could do a woodland management course and buy the necessary - and expensive - equipment.
My inclination might be to sell the land you don’t want. It could give you around £10,000 an acre, even more, but it depends hugely on soil quality, fencing, drainage, water supply, access, and maybe proximity to affluent householders looking for pony paddocks. But first you’d have to have the land cleared and prepared. If the price of doing that was under £5000 I would be surprised, if it was over £10,000 I don’t think I would be. You also need advice on the tax implications of this and the possibility of environmental subsidies.
I thank you have a far bigger challenge than you are imagining. Get in touch with the smallholders’ association and do nothing more until you have received advice from people who know what they’re talking about. Should you consider selling or renting the land to a farmer, get some counsel from a local land agent.
Posts
Please take a look at the link to local smallholders association that I posted earlier. There you will meet people who have been where you are and learned the lessons and they're usually very eager to help with advice and even equipment.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
If you're doing it yourself, you are best off tackling a small section at a time and working outwards. I doubt you'll ever clear the lot, or even need to, so you could put the rest of the site into woodland by planting trees. Woodland can be productive too, you could be in a position to sell chestnuts, hazel hurdles, and timber.
10 acres is an enormous area to deal with, and even if you cleared the whole lot in one go by whatever means, you will then be faced with what to do with it before Winter sets in.
My advice is to set aside 2 acres at the absolute most, that is more than enough to start with (personally l'd start with one acre, or even just standard allotment size would be even better).
Put up some temporary fencing (try Freecycle etc if budget is an issue) and concentrate on that section only.
The first thing you need to make a firm decision on, is how you clear the land. As has been said previously, most people on here are not keen on chemicals , especially where food is to be grown, but if you're not going down the organic route, it's your land and it's up to you.
Just out of curiosity l looked at the cost of clearing land and found this
https://gradedtradesmen.co.uk/price/how-much-does-land-clearing-cost
It may be more cost effective to either hire a digger or ask a local farmer/landowner if they would help or advise. People are usually happy to help, alternatively you could try your local Facebook group.
I feel if you try and do 10 acres in one go you will end up disheartened. Better to do it in stages and get the one part up and running and producing food for you, then move on to the next one. Apart from anything else, it will show you how long it takes, and what the pitfalls and successes will be.
I am only slightly better informed but, there again, I do not need to be as I am not in your position. My immediate thinking is that one acre is quite sufficient for your ambitions of self sufficiency. Any more land than that will require the buying or hiring of expensive machinery, labour and disposables.
So, on the 9 or so acres you can do little with, you could plant trees and run it as a wildlife sanctuary. Here you could seek advice from local wildlife organisations but just buying and planting the trees is going to cost many hundreds, even thousands of £s. That certainly does not square with doing things on a budget. You could, I suppose, donate the land to the wildlife trust and let them takeover giving you a very nice amenity immediately next to your retained plot. Or you could manage the woodland yourself, selling timber etc but that is not going to give you a return for a decade or so. In that time period you could do a woodland management course and buy the necessary - and expensive - equipment.
My inclination might be to sell the land you don’t want. It could give you around £10,000 an acre, even more, but it depends hugely on soil quality, fencing, drainage, water supply, access, and maybe proximity to affluent householders looking for pony paddocks. But first you’d have to have the land cleared and prepared. If the price of doing that was under £5000 I would be surprised, if it was over £10,000 I don’t think I would be. You also need advice on the tax implications of this and the possibility of environmental subsidies.
I thank you have a far bigger challenge than you are imagining. Get in touch with the smallholders’ association and do nothing more until you have received advice from people who know what they’re talking about. Should you consider selling or renting the land to a farmer, get some counsel from a local land agent.