From civil engineering to local contract work along the shoreline – we sat down with Jeff Hanson from VegOut CT, LLC to find out more about his unique career arc… and what makes his service so essential to creating the perfect outdoor environment for homes in Connecticut.

I retired from being a civil engineer and doing heavy construction. I did estimates on jobs – you know, when they come out and say ‘Well, a contractor said they’ll do the job for this price.’ I was the guy who would figure out that price.

I basically had had enough. I retired from doing that and started working around the house. My backyard was a mess and I wanted to clean it out. It was very overgrown with heavy brush, mostly invasive species. I tried numerous ways of clearing it out and renting equipment and nothing seemed to do the job effectively.

I found this thing called forestry mulching. I wanted to find contractors in Connecticut that did it, and there were none that would do it on a residential scale. Everyone who did the work only worked on power lines and gas pipelines… right-of-way clearing. Nothing on a small scale. But there were guys down south doing small scale forestry mulching. 

I did. 57 percent of the state of Connecticut is still forested. I found the golf courses and other potential customers – schools – and even on the residential market, there was significant market potential and very little competition, so here I am.

Our two machines very quickly turn heavy brush and woody waste into mulch. We’re geared more towards heavy-duty brush clearing and trees that are already down. I would describe it as halfway between landscaping and tree service. We don’t charge $5,000 to take a tree down. It’s not really what we do. 

Exactly. They’re not going to trim up small brush and stuff like that. We can eliminate that and clean up a very large space in a very short period of time.

Sure. Like, a field that’s been overgrown for five to ten years. We can clear sometimes as much as five acres of moderate brush in a day, with the right conditions.

Well, when somebody moves into a house in somewhere like Madison or Woodbridge and they have all this overgrowth in their backyard – they’re losing a lot of valuable land. With the equipment we have, we can knock it out in a day, typically. The equipment is powerful enough and big enough to be able get through the trees, grind everything up, leave a nice mulch, and give the backyard a nice park-like feel.

I’ll keep it simple: we turn what most people would consider to be an ugly backyard full of invasives, poison ivy, scrubby brush into a good-looking place. We get rid of tick habitats. Landscapers will not be faster than us with the raking and the hauling. Plus, all the organic material goes right back into the ground and makes better soil. And pricewise, it’s a pretty economical way for a person to get their time back.

We can make the huge difference happen quickly, make a very dramatic change to the appearance of the property, increase curb appeal, and improve a property in a hurry and for a relatively cheap price compared to remodeling, or other improvements. We’re at a typical house for a day, when it could take a homeowner an entire summer’s worth of weekends to get the job done.