I just finished a job doing this very thing. I for sure understand what you are dealing with. I also have a 3pt backhoe and I worry about putting unnecessary strain on it. I felt like it would be money well spent to get a machine made for this type of work. I rented a trackhoe for all the heavy work. Not only was it better equiped to handle the job at hand but had the required speed to get it done so much faster. It had a thumb on it and that gave me the capability to grab the stumps after digging around them and lift them out of the way. It took 3 full days (12 to 15 hr) to clear the brush and trees, do the ditch work, burn the brush pile and rough in the grade work. I brought my tractor in with loader and box scrape to slick it all up. After 3 days it looked pretty good. Let it get rained on 1 time to tell where any low spots were at. Came back the first time with 4 rolls of hay. Set hay off with spear and dig more grade work with the box. Returned one more time with forks, bucket, box and seed spreader. Moved the rest of the dirt with the bucket and box then switched to the forks and spreader. Spread seed and busted the hay up. All said and done it turn out nice. My customer ended up with a little over a acre of new yard and I didn't break any of my stuff doing something it wasn't designed to handle. Knowing how I would have treated my backhoe it would have taken me weeks to do what I did in 3 days with the trackhoe. Check out the hook plates I built for my bucket though. It may be something you would like to do on yours to solve the chain hooking problem.
