On 10/10/2010 8:32 AM, Jim Elbrecht wrote:
wrote:
-snip-

Well a few years ago I bought a big sears chipper for around 700 bucks
and severly trimmed 8 large trees. Spent the summer trimming and
chipping. Wore out the blades in the branch chipper part. Sears was
unable to get me replacement parts so the ultimately gave me a brand
new chipper for free. my returned one went to the crusher. sad it was
only a few months old.

Now I wanted a chipper my entire life but am going to sell
mine........


I had one for a season- many years ago. PITA. Now I compost
leaves and anything up to about pencil size. Most of it breaks down
in a year here in NY. The bigger-than-a-pencil stuff gets chopped
with an axe to be tossed into the firepit when we want to play with
fire.

I have a sharp axe and a 30" high chopping block. I reduce a pretty
hefty brushpile to 20gallons or so of sticks in a couple hours. A lot
less sweat than fighting with a clogging, screaming, dangerous
chipper--- and I can still listen to my MP3 player while I work.

Jim

Since I have allergies and don't trust my cheap prefab tin fireplace
anyway (and no SWMBO around, so no reason to call in a pro to check it
out), I don't burn wood. I used to burn a brush pile once a year, but
gave it up when my neighbor quit burning his now-huge one. (Saw
something in the paper that the township was now writing tickets for
that.) So both our brushpiles are now slowly getting smaller on their
own, while things live in them. New large branches go over the fence
into the wooded section of the graveyard that will never get used by
humans, and leaves and small stuff get dumped into the treeline along
the back fence. 4 feet tall in November, but basically vanishes by
spring. After 5 years, the walking back there is kind of spongy. It has
totally spoiled me for ever living in a house with living neighbors on
all sides- never wanna go back to bagging and hauling, or paying
somebody to haul it away. I don't garden, but if the next owner of this
dump does, they will have plenty of compost available.

--
aem sends...