Posts Tagged ‘chipping branches’
Everything Right
It is not uncommon to hear people lament that “It’s been one of those days,” where everything goes wrong. On the other hand, how often do you hear about a day when everything went right? That was an experience that I enjoyed yesterday.
We have a pretty significant number of projects we could undertake right now. I started the day yesterday by asking Cyndie if she had any priorities since she wasn’t going anywhere and the weather was dry and sunny. We agreed that doing some wood chipping would be a valuable precursor to continuing to primp the labyrinth garden plants before World Labyrinth Day on May 2nd.
Now, we don’t have the luxury of just stepping out the door and turning on the wood chipper with the flip of a switch. The steps involved before beginning this project are a little complex since it is the first attempt of the season. (Another first!)
Here is what needed to happen in order to get to the 3-point PTO wood chipper:
Since the ground is too soft for the big diesel tractor, we decided to chip up on the driveway. That meant we would need to collect tree limbs from the woods and then haul the wood chips down to the storage area near the labyrinth. That meant we needed to use the ATV and its trailer.
- Make sure the New Holland 3415 tractor starts.
- Make sure the Grizzly ATV starts.
- Remove the snowplow blade from the ATV.
- Put batteries in the Greenworks riding mower and move it out of the garage.
- Back the big tractor up to the wood chipper and make all the connections.
- Drive the ATV down to the hay shed to get the trailer stored there.
- Remove the water tank and miscellaneous apparatus from the trailer.
- Drive the ATV and trailer into the woods to collect tree limbs from staged piles.
- Unload the limbs onto the driveway so we can shoot the wood chips directly into the trailer.
By the time we finished all that, I needed to get some lunch. Not on the list, while I was in the hay shed getting the trailer, I noticed a couple more pallets that would be perfect for a second set to use in the compost area. They were stacked behind a lot of other things, so it took a few minutes of acrobatic arranging to pull them out.
After lunch, Cyndie suggested putting a tarp in the trailer to catch the wood chips. I brought out the big tractor and parked the two machines side by side.
The only thing that didn’t go as planned was that a couple of limbs we’d hauled up were a hair too big. We just set them aside and forged ahead, undaunted. We filled the trailer two times with the limbs we had brought out of the woods.
I drove the ATV down the hill and pulled the tarp out of the trailer to dump the chips. It worked slick.
The wood we hauled made more chips than we expected, so we chose not to bring more branches up to the driveway and began the process of cleaning up and parking vehicles back in the shop garage.
It is rare that I ever accomplish anything without having to cope with some interruption or failure along the way. I’m happy to report that yesterday was very special because everything we set out to do worked without a hitch.
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Chippin’ Away
Little by little, day by day… We made another modicum of progress in dealing with the wealth of downed trees awaiting processing on our property on Thursday. I didn’t have a wasp get into my sleeve and painfully sting me four times when I grabbed a branch to put it in the ATV trailer. Cyndie can’t say the same thing.
Her wrist and forearm looked a bit like a hot baseball bat but that didn’t keep her from carrying on and loading branches into the chipper.
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Under the canopy of leaves that created dappled light over our chosen workspace, we made quick work of the collection of prime-sized, appropriately trimmed limbs we’ve been stockpiling for just this purpose. Once the trailer was emptied, we sought out worthy specimens scattered throughout the immediate vicinity.
That effort reaffirmed my interest in putting more time toward pre-staging the optimum branches for chipping. The brilliant chipper attachment we have can handle up to 5-inch diameter branches but too large a “Y” breakout on a limb will seize progress as it gets wedged in the narrowest point of the chute. Sticks and twigs that are small can also bog things down.
Lately, I find myself inclined toward optimizing production of the best chips for landscaping by choosing ideally sized limbs. There is a time and place for chewing up entire piles of branches, but lately, our purposes call for less shrapnel and more good chip chunks.
Our next task along these lines will be to process the remaining downed trees, trimming and sorting limbs for a future day of chipping. It will be a rewarding exercise on its own, but it is also a form of delayed gratification… if you know what I mean.
There is something really satisfying about grinding a trailer-load of arm-sized branches into a huge pile of wood chips.
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Stocking Up
Always one of my favorite projects for the dual reward, yesterday was dominated by cleaning up brush piles by turning them into wood chips. We started with our main storage location empty and finished with it filled.
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Toiling away in the remarkably summery heat in the first week of November, it was surprisingly quick work to reach that goal. The problem with that is we didn’t begin to put a dent in the number of limbs lying everywhere around our property.
Honestly, we could work on chipping downed branches every day for weeks and likely not exhaust the supply. In fact, as I was traversing one of the trails through our trees after putting away the tractor, I arrived at a freshly fallen branch that wasn’t there when I passed moments earlier.
Our stock of chips is full and our stock of branches awaiting future chipping is even fuller.
Plenty of fodder to allow us to get two things done at once when that next becomes the project we choose.
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Another One
We have been very lucky recently that the most violent of the stormy weather passing through our region has been missing us. Instead of 4 or 5 inches of rain, we have had 1.75 inches. Despite the wild panic Delilah has demonstrated over rumbles of thunder that occurred, no lightning strikes have hit nearby. Most worrisome for me over the weekend were reports of 70 and 80 mph wind gusts combined with golfball to baseball-sized hailstones crashing down.
That never materialized here. Still, for some strange reason, we continue to experience falling trees. On Saturday, I posted about the tree that fell on Friday, even though I wasn’t aware we had experienced any storm. By the end of that same day, there was another even bigger busted tree hanging across that same trail.
We didn’t hear that one, either.
It’s becoming an obstacle course to navigate that trail through the woods. Cyndie was away all weekend, so I respected our agreement to avoid using the chain saw when I’m alone and left the three downed trees across the path for the time being.
It’s probably only marginally safer to use the wood chipper, but I elected to work with that yesterday morning while I waited for the overnight dew to evaporate from the really long lawn grass. Mowing the lawn became the afternoon project.
The professional crew we hired to bring down that big oak that toppled, cut it up and left everything lay right where it was, which saved us a lot of money. Now I’m having second thoughts about those savings. Wrestling the branches to get them into and down the chute of the chipper is a real chore if the “Y” junctions aren’t trimmed.
It is a “pay me now or pay me later” process. I don’t want to spend time cutting every last branch, so I spend the time instead, trying to force the branches far enough down the chute to where the chipper will grab and break them.
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Most of the cut logs are so big I can’t lift them. They will get rolled downhill to where I can get them in the ATV trailer to be moved up by the woodshed for splitting.
The chickens seem to like scratching through the pile of wood chips. I have no idea what they were finding in there.
I will be very surprised if I don’t end up with a poison ivy reaction after that exercise. Right where I stood to feed the chipper, there was a known patch of poison ivy. I expect it was getting on the branches I was grabbing, it was probably getting atomized by the chipper, I was likely breathing it, and wiping sweat off my face with gloves that handled it.
I washed down thoroughly afterward, but time will tell whether I was being stupidly careless, or that my previous recent exposures with sequentially reduced reactions were an indication that my sensitivity is fading. I should know in a day or two.
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Relative Something 