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Terracing my property
Personally I think your trying to solve the problem the wrong way.
First of all, one of your guess-timates is off, 50' x 200' is 10,000 square feet, not 4,000. This makes a big difference in how much work you might have ahead of you.
Other than that, terraces have their own unique problems, and you may just be swapping one set of problems for another. If you have 50' of 12% grade for example, that is a 6' vertical drop over 50' of horizontal distance. If you use 4 drops (for easy math) it equates to 4 individual drops of 18". These will require either something to hold the soil back, or it will eventually slump downhill, or that they be graded to a maximum of 3:1 slope, or in other words, that an 18" slope be done over a 54" distance horizontally. Do this 4 times and you still have 216" (or 18 feet) of slope to deal with, and now they are even steeper than before, and so skinny that they are tough to maintain.
My suggestion to you would be to put a lot of dirt at the bottom of the slope (or take some from the top and move it down to the bottom), lengthening the horizontal distance of the 6' height difference, and reduce the overall slope to a more comfortable 5 or 6 degrees.
Best of luck.
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Terracing my property
Reberta, TomG hit on the key point I was trying to make.
If the slope is down the 200' length then your problem is even bigger (or in this case taller) than I thought at first. The vertical difference is 24' (at 12% grade) and if you want wide terraces then the vertical drop is taken up in few steps, meaning each one is a bigger step. Even if you broke it up into 6 drops, each one would still be 6' vertically. If you take 6 drops of 6' each at 50' in width, that is 1,800 square feet of retaining wall if you went that way. I don't know where you are located but in most places that would be at least $30,000 if you were to hire someone to build that much wall, even just from rock-filled gabions (those big wire baskets, ugly, but cheap and funcional). That is a big job, a really big job. Probably a lot more than you and your Kubota are ready for.
My suggestion would be to consider one of the following;
1) hire a local excavator to dig the hill back at the top, and fill in at the bottom to reduce the grade to a maximum of 6% grade, then you & the 'Bota spread topsoil over the new grade and start the new grass cover.
2) buy copious amounts of the special 'hillside' seed mix that the Highways people use now, it is a mixture of grasses that don't grow more than 6" or so, and wild flowers of various description. It will take a little while to achieve, but when it's doen you end up with a beautiful 'au naturel' hillside that never needs to be mowed, so grade is irrelevant.
Best of luck.
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Terracing my property
Reberta, first of all, your assumption is correct, Murf = Murphy, Ted Murphy actually.
In order of the points you raised.
No, exact measurements are not necessary, but knowing what your up against is.
Yes, there is a fairly easy way to figure out grades, degrees is probably the easiest. Take a long straight piece of wood (2x4 works fine) and lay it on the slope, in the direction of the slope, and put a small bubble level, commonly called a torpedo level, next to it and adjust it to level and trace the intersection on the 2x4. A protractor from a child's math set will give you the degree of slope, being the angle difference between the top of the 2x4 and the pencil line.
The work COULD be done with your equipment, but it would be a big job, and complicated work like that on a slope to boot is not for the faint of heart, or begginers, IMHO. If YOU feel comfortable with tackling it slowly and cautiously then by all means, GO GIRL!
The big problem is the slope, wheeled machines with a relatively high center of gravity are the most difficult, you would normally want a tracked excavator for this type of job, both because they are a lot more stable, but also because they are SO much faster.
I have no CLUE what equipment cost are in 'your neck of the woods' or how many cubic yards of material is involved (time = money), since I don't know how drastic a change you want to achieve. I can however, tell you that any reputable contractor will be glad to come out and discuss the job with you, if you tell them straight out you are shopping for a ballpark price, and that you are willing to do the 'trim' or finishing work.
The other approach is to do it in phases, or tell them they can do it as 'fill in' work, lots of times there is a couple of days between jobs, or when a job is held up waiting for something. It is amazing what one of these machines can accomplish in a day, especially when it is working solo and does not have to wait for dump trucks, etc. Most contractors are happy to work on a "T&M" (time & materials) basis, if you tell them you have enough money for two days (as an example) machine time, they will do that much work, you can always do more later as money allows.
Another option that may be if one of your local contractors is doing a job near you, and they need a place to dump excess fill, you can make a horse trade, you take their fill, which will reduce the slope, they put a machine in to fix the rest of the slope up.
As for the soil type, you couldn't really ask for better soil for this type of work.
Sorry for the length of this post, but it's not a simple job.
Best of luck.
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Terracing my property
First of all, good for you, go for it.
Good choice on buying a heavy duty quality implement too.
Now on to the dry advice section.
The GPS is excellent for certain tasks but working on a slope with equipment is a situation where you want to keep your eyes on the task at hand, not an LCD screen. Use the GPS unit, or just a couple of lengths of rope for that matter, to set out 'Batten Boards' (or stakes) at each end of the runs you will be making, you start at one and aim for the opposite one to keep yourself online with each pass. That way you can concentrate on your driving.
One tip I have for you is to start the whole operation by stripping off any topsoil there is and piling it off to the sides, you will want to put it back on top of the finished product, no use buying what you buried earlier.
The other idea is to strip as much soil as the box will hold then pick it up with the loader, assuming you have one, and get a second box full with the blade, this will speed up the task considerably. Also, if I remember correctly you have pretty stiff soil, if your box has scarifiers, use them first, it will make the scraping go MUCH easier and faster.
Don't be afraid to ask even the smallest question, and most importantly, BE CAREFUL.
Best of luck.
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Terracing my property
Tom has pretty much covered it all, as far as the roads, and levelling in general goes, whenever possible you want to work from the top of the hill down, despite what most people think as they get older, gravity is a GOOD thing.
As for the loading of dirt, try whenever possible to reverse AROUND the pile of dirt mounded up with the box, backup past the dirt on the uphill side (then if you climb a bit of it will tend to tip the machine INTO the hill and not flip it downhill) then scooping it up with the loader will be much easier since it isn't compacted, and it's FAR safer to go around it than climb over it on a side-slope.
Best of luck.
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Terracing my property
Reberta, despite what most women think, gravity is a GOOD thing,  .
Carefully dig a hole on the downhill side of the rock, dig the downhill side of the hole all the way out until it meets the existing grade, then roll it out and down the hill. If this is not practical, then dig a hole larger and deeper than the rock and RIGHT next to it then tumble it over in to the deeper hole and bury it.
If neither of these ideas seem workable your only other solution is to raise the road bed over that area if possible, or extend the road out further past it and make the turnaround beside it instead of over it.
Best of luck.
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Terracing my property
There is a very great difference in both the design and principle of by which they operate between a shredder & a chipper.
A chipper is a series of rotating knives fastened to either a drum-like arrangement, or a plate that spins. The knives are fixed to the rotating memeber adjoing a hole in said member, they are adjusted so that the knife can only take a set sized peice off the wood being fed through, kind of like a woodworkers plane. This controls the speed at which the machine can process wood down to a point which it can handle.
A shredder on the other hand is best described as a flail mower in a box, there is a rotating axle on which a series of moveable blades are attached. As the axle spins centrifugal force makes them stand out at their full length, material is then fed into this area and the knives repeatedly strike the material until it is small enough to pass a restricor device at the output opening. This design however allows for a much larger quantity of material to be put in at once, if it is material which is hard for the flail knives to process, like small twigs which are inserted parallel to the direction of rotation and therefore not hit very often, it is very easy indeed to overwhelm the machine. On the other hand, bulky material like leaves can be processed far faster with this type of design.
We find that the best way to clear material like this is to (if possible) time the work in such a way as to be cutting and chipping this material early in the spring, before it bears leaves, then it can all just put through the chipper since it is bare twigs only.
Best of luck.
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