If the trails project is going to proceed, I’ll have to move the wood chipper down the hill. It has wheels so downhill is no problem…but getting it back up the hill would be a problem. It’s a heavy mother. Hopefully I’ve solved the problem with a battery-powered winch.
This 5 minute video looks at how trail designers (it never occurred to me there was such a thing) and engineers do what they do.
I’ve fallen into something of a routine. One day of cutting and dragging trees/brush; one day of chipping; and one day of lining the path-to-be with rocks and spreading cedar chips.
The rock work would be quite the chore but for the fact I’m never more than an arm’s reach from a rock. Lots of rocks. Tomorrow is chipping day.
I started playing with the idea of cutting some walking path through our woods back in May of this year. The project stalled out when I realized how much brush and how many cedar trees would have to be hauled off, one pickup load at a time. The alternative was a whole bunch of brush piles somewhere on our property. Either option was proving exhausting.
The recent addition of a wood chipper has breathed new life into the project. I quickly had enough chips to cover the first path and today I started a second leg, mainly to have some place to put the chips. Now I can cut and chip with abandon.
UPDATE: The photo below was taken a day later, from the other end of the path-in-progress. Difficult to see here but making progress. It’s not unrealistic that I might be able to create a mile of paths, given enough time.
Surounded by trees, we don’t get spectacular sunrises and sunsets. We just don’t get much of a horizon. But we do have a tiny vista, looking down our road to the hills just on the other side of the Missouri River. It’s so quiet we can hear approaching vehicles — few and far between if you don’t count neighbors — from far down the hill.
When the sun does shine through the trees in the late afternoon, we get some flattering light. My friend John says this was taken using the Old Man filter. I am much happier than I look. Ditto for Riley.
Having determined how big a branch the new chipper can (and cannot) chew up, we’re ready to roll the chipper down the hill to start chipping. It took about 45 minutes to cut and stack these cedar trees but it would have taken much longer to drag them up or down the hill. This will be the first real-world test for the chipper.
My first brush with brush dates back to 2015 and I’ve cut and hauled (or had hauled) a lot of it since then. I’m constantly asked, “Why don’t you burn it?” Can you say forest fire? No thanks. There’s lots of video here of crews from Korte Tree Service chipping up my brush piles and while I knew they made small chippers for home use, I just never made the leap.
According to a whole bunch of YouTube videos, this one can chip branches up to 3 inches in diameter. That would take care of about 80% of my scrub cedar trees. The manual said run the engine for 3 hours to “break it in” and following that we shredded some hydrangea clippings.
The chipper is damned heavy but it rolls pretty easily so my plan is to take it down into the woods a way, closer to where I’ll be cutting, and chip those rascals up on-site. No more dragging up the hill, stacking, loading into the pickup and hauling off to a friends property who burns them for me.
Before taking the chipper into the woods, I ran a couple of scrub cedar trees through to see if it could eat a 3 inch tree. I’d say 2.5 inches is a big as it can handle. I also learned I need to trim the trunk of limbs.
The most surprising thing I’ve discovered is just how small the pile of chips is. Photo below is from two small trees.
This afternoon I’m heading into the woods to drop and stack a bunch of small cedar trees. Tomorrow I’ll roll the chipper as close to the pile as I can get it and start chipping.
The new well is in and today was devoted to decommissioning the old well. The Missouri Department of Natural Resources has guidelines on this but the goal seems to be preventing contamination.
This involved pouring twenty bags of something called Envrioplug down the well. Moisture (and a little time) turns this into a hard clay-like substance that plugs the well until the end of time. After that it was Bobcat work, filling in the trench that held the pipes feeding water from the new well to a pressure tank in our basement…
…and tidying up the surrounding area.
For many years we’ve had an Invisible Fence surrounding our yard (and a bit more). We managed to cut that wire while digging the new well. Today Edward came out to repair the fence so it was a good time to reposition a little to avoid similar issues in the future. Edward’s trenching gizmo made quick work of it.
