Ideas on how to chip deadfall aspen?

[dboreham]

Hello, I confess I don't actually own a tractor, but I do have a mini excavator and a compact track loader, so I'm hoping I'm allowed to post...

I have 10 acres of aspen trees. At our altitude they have a tendency to fall over under late spring snow load after coming into leaf. As a result I have hundreds of fallen trees that have accumulated over the years. They look pretty messy. They're also something of a wildfire fuel hazard. So I'd like to do something with at least some proportion of them. In the past I've bucked the trunks with chainsaw and burned, but that's too slow and risky.

There are large chippers that will eat the trunks whole (mostly it's in the 6-8" range), but they're way outside my price range to buy, and renting isn't workable for me because I get only short periods of time here and there at short notice to work outside. There are small chippers that I can afford : 4" or so, that won't take my trunks.

Wondering if there's some clever solution here? Splitting the tree trunks seems like it wouldn't work because the longest piece you can split is only 2' , and you're left with firewood which won't (as far as I can see) go through a chipper.

Hope that made sense, thanks for any suggestions.

 

[groundcover]

Buy a real chipper, do your work and sell it later. The clean used pre emission stuff is bringing a premium price now though. Friend of mine has a big gasser on order after the problems he's had with a new diesel. He said he could sell one of his pre emission rigs for almost more than he paid ! I picked up a very clean 2008 Brush Bandit 12" ,140hp Cat with a winch, that thing will put a smile on your face !

 

[ericm979]

If you had a PTO you could run a 9" Woodmaxx chipper. They're reasonably affordable. It takes some HP to chip the larger stuff.
But with the equipment you have the only choice is to do all the pulling and stacking when you have time and then dedicate days at a time to chip the piles with a rented chipper. If you do a good job stacking then the chipping can be done with little dead time where the chipper's not busy while you're searching for the next piece.

There may be free or low cost chipping available from the local fire safe council or similar.

 

[Thomas]

Maybe make brush/wood pile let dry and burn it save the $$$'s.

 

[dboreham]

Maybe make brush/wood pile let dry and burn it save the $$$'s.

I don't really have the space to make a big burn pile. Plus around here there are pretty strict permitting constraints on burning that can be hard to work with as far as not being able to burn before the snow comes and not being able to burn after that because the pile is under snow. And lastly, there's a rule that if you start a wildfire you have to pay for all the damage it causes. I've done loads of burning over the years but have decided to rule it out going forward.

 

[dboreham]

Buy a real chipper, do your work and sell it later. The clean used pre emission stuff is bringing a premium price now though. Friend of mine has a big gasser on order after the problems he's had with a new diesel. He said he could sell one of his pre emission rigs for almost more than he paid ! I picked up a very clean 2008 Brush Bandit 12" ,140hp Cat with a winch, that thing will put a smile on your face !

Thanks, I suppose I was thinking along the same lines but I need to get finance committee approval. Finance committee does not like downed trees all over the property though...

 

[oosik]

I guess if you want it done. A large stand alone chipper and then sell it when finished. I thin and chip my Ponderosa pine stands every two years or so. 750 to 1000 small pines. 1" to 6" on the butt. Identify > fall > drag to pile > chip. I have a PTO driven Wallenstein BX62S. It chips up to and including 6".

My hardest part of this entire process - - dragging the fallen trees to a pile. A 6" green pine is roughly 20 feet tall. When I finish tinning a stand it looks like a gigantic game of "Pick-Up-Sticks". I will go into a stand with 60 to 75 small trees and end up with a dozen still standing, when I'm done. It's hard enough just dragging a 6" pine - let alone weaving my way thru a MAZE of small fallen trees. Me falling down is normal. I've had a whole lot of experience falling. I'm actually pretty good at it and seldom get hurt. I will thin, maybe, 15 to 20 stands in the spring. It takes me a month to a month and a half - working almost every day for four to six hours per day. When I get to the chipping part - I can do an entire eight hour day.

My point being - look at the trees you want to chip. Actually, go out grab a big one and see how far you can drag it. Now - look at how many you will have to drag. Are you up to it??? There is no way in God's green earth that I could drag a 6" or 8" Aspen tree that I have around here. I only have pine on my 80 acres but there is a stand of Aspen in a valley near by.

You will soon tire of moving any chipper to the trees. Dragging the trees to a pile and chipping off that pile is the only way to go.

Consider your options carefully before deciding on a large chipper. Even one with a built in winch is a very slow process.

 

[JamesHW]

I wonder what it would cost to bring in someone with or rent a skidsteer with a forestry mulching blade for a day? Come and grind everything up where it lays/leans, leaving you with a manageable cleanup. I agree bucking the logs in place is hazardous, heck, even just limbing deadfall can lead to bad surprises. We have downed trees around our place (but not the fire hazard thankfully) and I’m considering getting one of these gas winches to help drag deadfall out of ravines and clearings to areas where they can be out of the way and managed.

 

[RidgeHiker]

I have a Woodmaxx WM-8M PTO 8" chipper. It is well built and heavy duty for what it is. I have a 45.6 PTO HP tractor. Dried wood is slower to chip than green and dulls blades faster. "Hundreds" of downed trees would be a huge project for this type of chipper. For a recent project with a substantial amount of difficult wood to chip after a couple days with the Woodmaxx I rented a commercial chipper. Was a world of difference!

Still happy with my Woodmaxx and will continue to use it but not a match for everything.

 

[rScotty]

I have no idea how to completely dispose with large tree trunks. What I do with our Pondarosa and Fir trees is drop them, limb them, chip the slash, and cut the trunks into 20 foot lengths.....which I've been making into neat piles about 5 or ten logs wide and as many high. A big backhoe with a thumb is really handy for stacking logs.

BTW, that's just one of the many uses of a backhoe that has nothing at all to do with digging.

At least stacked like that the logs are out of the way and not a danger. And if they ever do have a use, only the bottom ones rot, the rest just cure in place. So far we stack them up against a row of large trees or big boulders and let nature take its course. Originally my thought was as they settled they would make good shelter for critters, but if that's the case I haven't really noticed it.