I've spent quite a few winters over the years cleaning out fencerows trimming back along woods etc. so these are only my opinions but it works "here"

Just about all of that was done by hand with little mechanical help. Very low cost but very labor intensive.

I would cut all the trees down, pile brush, cut up the wood and split and haul that. Then come back and saw all the stumps off at ground level. Wore out a couple chain saws and lots of chains over the years but also quickly learned how to hand file a chain to make it cut like new instead of paying to have them sharpened all the time.

I'd hand pile the brush in smaller piles and stagger them so I could get to each one. On a good cold day when the ground was frozen I'd start building a small fire. Bags, twine, dry seasoned wood old boards whatever that was available that was good and dry. It takes time and patience to get a good hot base fire and thick hot coals.

I'd usually build my fire in the middle of all my piles. Once I had a good hot fire I'd start throwing a few branches in off the closest piles.  Starting with the finer stuff first and then start getting the bigger stuff. All of this continues to build your base fire and bed of coals. When it's so hot you can't hardly get close enough to throw anymore on it your finally ready. I used a rear mounted 3 point blade on the 2010 most of the time. You need to make your piles according to what you can push. The frozen ground is nice as it keep a bunch of mud and dirt form being pushed into your fire.I would start pushing piles of brush to and into the fire. Might get a little white smoke as it was pushed in but for the most part not much smoke at all. Green stuff or whatever would burn in my fires.  Sap would be boiling out the ends of the brush but it all would burn anyhow on account of the hot coals and base fire. It would get to the point it would burn stuff about as fast as you could push piles into it.

 The key is patience and handling the material. Everybody wants to build a big pile and then light it all at once. They pour on the fuel and oil and whatever else and mostly get lots of black smoke(unwanted attention) this burns all the fines out and your left with big stuff that is green and won't burn. Some bigger fires I could come back a week later and dig in the ashes and still find red hot coals. If you keep coming back pushing stubs and stuff in when your all done there will be nothing left not stumps or anything but ashes. 

I've also used a  super hot fire and cold water to break a huge rock (before I knew anybody that had a backhoe or trackhoe.) There was a little tip that was sticking out I caught when plowing. I dug around this monster all by hand then I had to dig a deeper hole for the ground water to go into. Built the hot fire then poured 5 gallon buckets of cold water on it. Broke it into 3 big chunks that I could drag out of the hole and were about all I could carry on the quick hitch with a chain around them.

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