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Average Member
 
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| well we chip some things here, but it's time consuming. The other factor here in PA is that some plants can produce shoots even from chips. Ash is great for soil short term.
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Senior Member
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Its a good question Wichman, and I am not really sure how it pencils out. We do not have the capability to chip wood ourselves so I would have to get someone in to do that. We do have log loaders and pulp trucks though that move tree length round wood, so I typically log that way. You do get more money for round wood, and doing it yourself you get 66% of the wood value instead of 33%. The problem is, after I am done harvesting the stems, I am left with lots of brush. That brush has weight and if chipped up would make some money...
So I don't know. Would those limbs at 18 bucks a ton amount to more then a 1/3 increase in weight for just the trunks? I don't know. It would save me a lot of work from having to pile up the brush with an excavator or tractor, and then burning the piles. I will say, when a chipping contractor leaves the woods after a clear cut, the only thing left is stumps and that is nice when making a field.
I have a lot more acres of land I would like to clear so I go back and forth on this issue. In some ways it would just be nice to have a chipping contractor come in and leave nothing but stumps, but we have always cut our own woodlot. Plus whole tree chipping crews typically don't high-grade....they don't care if its a 3 foot diameter white pine going through the chipper...if its making chips then they are happy even if a 400 dollar log just made 90 bucks in chips. We got a lot of nice wood so I would hate to see it go to biomass when some nice lumber can be sawn from it.
As for chipping the brush manually, that is out of the question time wise. I got 16 piles with most the size of a small house so there is a significant pile of wood to chip up. Burning them as WOS says would also give me some wood ash for the soil and negate the acidic soil here.
As for burn permits, you don't even need any here. As long as there is snow on the ground you can burn brush piles since there is no forest fire danger. I'll let the piles dry down over the summer and then this winter when I get a few inches of snow, I'll torch them.
I love vegetarians...slice them real thin, dip them in ranch dressing and they compliment lamb quite well! :-)
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Average Member
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I'll let the piles dry down over the summer and then this winter when I get a few inches of snow, I'll torch them
here we use watching the pile as a reason to go sledding Grampa would light a pile of brush and if we got cold, we would go over by the fire. It was a great sunday job.
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Junior Member
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Drawbar,
What type of trees are in your timber?
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Senior Member
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A vast variety actually. I have been clearing a 12 acre tree plantation of hackmatack that was devastated by a bark beadle infestation, but I have been working on a mixed hardwood and softwood forest lately on the outside of that tree plantation.
Its been tough because a lot of the hardwood trees have been ash which have an incredibly tough stump to pull from the earth. Hackmatack are nearly as bad, but spruce and apple scatter their roots out across the ground and are easy to pop out. Beech are tough to pull as well, while popil, hemlock and fir pop right out without effort.
Limb wise, softwood trees make the biggest mess because you never use the limbs. You cut the limbs at the trunk and move on. With hardwood trees, you can use the limbs for firewood so there is a lot less mess.
I love vegetarians...slice them real thin, dip them in ranch dressing and they compliment lamb quite well! :-)
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