The Woodchipper

So we finally rented the woodchipper on Friday morning, I was pretty stoked about finally transforming the two epic woodpiles into mulch to go around our raised beds. We needed to fuel up our bodies before we started the rental clock ticking at $20 an hour, so we decided to stop for some breakfast on the way to Valley Rentals. Breakfast at Hardee's. A Hardee's packed to the gills with rejected extras from "The Hills Have Eyes 3". Damn, I may not leave the farm much but I felt like I was a tourist in a foreign land or watching the hyenas devour something at a zoo. There was a line at least 20 deep of people who could not wait to lay their paws on blueberry glazed biscuits or biscuits & gravy or ultimate loaded biscuits, which is what I ended up ordering. How can you go wrong with 4 different kinds of pig on a freshly baked biscuit? It was Good Friday and school was out for the day and it seemed like half of Caldwell County had decided to take the young'uns out for a breakfast celebrating Easter and pork. I can't front though, my biscuit was tasty and we departed full of the potential energy necessary to chip wood on a 90 degree day.

Let me introduce ya'll to the Bandit Model 85XL, capable of handling branches up to 6'' in diameter. On the way home, while towing this bad boy, April mentioned the movie "Fargo" at least twice.

Once we had got it up the steep driveway to the first pile of branches, we began to realize just how hot it was. Got out the Peltor hearing protection we use when we shoot and covered up the target area with a tarp for easy cleanup. It was chipping time, firing up the beast and cranking up the throttle I felt the same way I did when I watched "Conan the Barbarian" for the first time. We fed a few of the larger sticks through to get a sense for the machine and then proceeded to violate nearly all of the safety directions on the sticker next to the intake by reaching in to force larger and larger piles of wood debris through the mangler.

We got through the first brush pile in about an hour and were ready to move on to the pile on our "back forty." The main concern was whether we would be able to get the woodchipper back there and then turned around to tow it back out. We plotted a course and were pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to get the woodchipper over some rough terrain and in place by the second pile.

After laying some landscaping plastic down where we intended the woodchips to go, we fired up the beast again and resumed chipping. It was easily the hottest day of the year and by this point we were both sweating up a storm and feeling the effects of the heat and humidity. Manhandling large logs and gathering little sticks into piles sufficient to stuff down the maw of the Bandit XL is tough under the angry spring sun. We were on the clock so breaks weren't really in the gameplan, but ended up being necessary to avoid heatstroke. We got through the pile and I ventured out into the woods to see if I could find anything else to chip. I wanted to make full use of the chipper while we had it. A couple of the logs I found just were too much for the Bandit so we set them aside to use as retaining walls for the mulch. We decided to wrap up the operation after about 5 hours and towed the Bandit back to the rental place after topping up the gas tank which was almost empty by that point. We didn't get around to spreading the woodchip mulch until today but were pretty happy to cover up all that landscaping fabric with something a little classier. Here's a little taste of the mulched goodness now surrounding the raised beds: