Clearing my woods for the tub grinder!
As many of you know, I feel very strongly about composting. In fact, an entire corner of my property is devoted to that process. I just love the fact that all of my garden beds are top-dressed and enriched with gorgeous compost made right here on the farm. I like to think of it as black gold - the nutrient-rich result of an ageless ecological process.
One large pile in my compost area is devoted to brush, branches, logs, and stumps. All of this matter will eventually decompose, however, to speed things up considerably, we bring in a machine called a tub grinder. This grinding apparatus is scheduled to arrive within the next week or two and I cannot wait to show you what a fantastic job it does. In the meantime, my grounds crew has been busy clearing the woods of all the fallen braches and other debris and adding that to the pile.
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- After several windy storms, the woods were full of broken tree branches.
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- Many neat piles were formed along the carriage road.
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- There’s always time to appreciate the beauty of nature – bracket fungus on a piece of decaying wood.
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- Bracket fungus is so textural and interesting to look at.
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- This is some of my grounds crew. These strong, hard workers are Sherpas from Nepal – Mingmar, Pete, and Phurba.
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- This fungus looks just like one of Mom’s pierogies!
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- Looking closely, you can see that it’s actually very organized – brush and sticks in the front and….
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- This is the large mound where all of the hard brush and logs from the farm are piled.
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- miscellaneous logs and stumps in the back.
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- This is the same area where we planted a Christmas tree farm last spring. Most of the trees are doing quite nicely.
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- Despite the rainy weather, the men scoured the woods for branches.
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- This is Chhiring Sherpa – my property foreman.
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- Chhiring knows the importance of wearing proper safety equipment.
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- When the truck is full, it’s off to the compost area.
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- Chhiring at the controls of my loader
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- All those branches get loaded up.
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- When the bucket is full, the ‘jaws’ are lowered.
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- Those jaws help to compact the load.
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- The branches are then transferred onto the dump truck.
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- The truck is making its way to the far side of the property where the composting takes place.
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- The dump truck backs up to the pile and empties the load.
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- Then, it’s back to the woods for more.
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