wood chipping

Wood Chipping at Two Locations

I think we have turned the corner into spring, finally. The temperatures are rising and it’s the perfect time to work outdoors. We spent another afternoon chipping alders at the first location, across the lake. This time the wind worked in our favour and all the chips fell where they were intended to fall. Not on the neighbours driveway like last week. So we still had to do a final cleanup.

chipping trees,forestry,arborist,landscaping
Tasked to clean up wood chips on driveway.

It doesn’t look too bad in the picture, but the chips were quite thick in spots, like several feet, plus we had to get the ditch cleaned out. We armed ourselves with the usual tools like shovels and rakes and got ourselves mentally prepared for some manual labor on this beautiful sunny day when Jim had a brilliant idea. That happens some times.

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Loading the skidsteer

We decided to bring the skidsteer over to do the majority of the work, with minimal raking and shovelling. Perfect.

When we got there, Jim started by scraping the driveway, then cleaning out the ditch and dumping the chips on the homeowners property.

skid steer,chipping trees,forestry,arborist,landscaping
Plenty of chips to move.

We didn’t want to leave a mess for her to deal with so Jim crossed to the other side. No he didn’t pass away! He crossed the ditch and began flattening out the mounds.

skid steer,chipping trees,forestry,arborist,landscaping
Pulling back mounds of wood chips

We did have one little scare. Jim got stuck on the other side in deep mud. A tow truck flashed before my eyes. Thankfully he managed to get out after a couple of tries. Then we got smart and started at the top of the hill where it was dry.

skid steer,chipping trees,forestry,arborist,landscaping
Up on dryer ground makes it easier.

The next day, after our office work was done, we headed out to the second job. This time we got smart and brought a helper.  We were working on a cottage owners land beside another lake in the area. He had an arborist in to thin the wooded lot and then we got the call to do the final clean-up. We worked on either side of the cottage and then down the driveway.

This picture is after we had cleaned the first side.

chipping trees,forestry,arborist,landscaping
Thinned out and cleaned up. Beautiful.

The arborist had cut everything up in itty bitty pieces thinking it would decay faster, that made our work harder. Instead of picking up one branch, we had to pick up a ton of little pieces.

Jim says – No fault of the arborist, he did his job correctly. The idea of chipping for cleanup probably came after the fact. Here’s a hint to land owners who are looking to have their trees spaced. If you are having an arborist come in to space the trees, then you want us to clean up after with the chipper, just have the arborist cut down the tree whole. Cut the tall trees in 8 foot lengths. Don’t bother delimbing, our chipper can take the whole tree… branches and all. It will save the arborist time cutting, and it will save us time picking up the pieces. Time saved is money saved for the land owner.

chipping trees,forestry,arborist,landscaping
Keeping the chipper fed.

Here is our helper for the day, our nephew Scott with an armload.

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Scott doing his share of the work.

We were glad to finish these two jobs. Now to recover the ol’ body for what ever comes next.

Later

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