Day 790 - Harnessing Resources - Storm Debris to Compost

PPO3 is supported by Timber King sawmills. For more information on my 1220 CRZ mill or one of many Foley hydraulic options go to TimberKing.com. Today we're up the driveway a little bit next to these walnut trees. Remember last year we cleared all of this out as far as the driveway berm. All of the driveway excavation was just piled up next to the side of this right here and full of debris and sticks and logs and all kinds of craziness. Anyway we cleared up the and basically cleared out a lot of area underneath these walnut trees and didn't plant anything. As soon as I said that I remembered we did plant a few things. We took a couple bags of like lentil beans from the grocery store and and lima beans and sunflower seeds and we just chucked them out here to get some just get some roots in the ground and all of those well a lot of those came up but we didn't do anything else other than that and I don't see any beans walking through here so maybe they were good to get some roots in the grounds. However all of the native grass seeds that we have this seed bank that we have in the ground it has just flourished. We have nothing but really tall grasses and I'm I'm five foot six and this is my eye level. Well this one's taller than I am. A lot of these in here are taller than me. The majority of them have gone to seed. I was wanting to wait until this goes to seed because this is a nice little wildlife area but we want to keep keep reinvesting these nutrients into this area. We're going to cut the majority of this. Also we have to clean up from the ice storm debris. The inside here there's a bunch of sticks here and there that if I ever wanted to mow this I can't just straight up come in here and mow it. There's a lot of attention that needs to be had or needs to be given to the storm debris. We still have some trees that are down on their sides over there. This some of these just got ravished. I don't know how much of the actual debris we'll be able to to tackle today and there's also a big large not quite burned pile right there that we're going to leave for wildlife. On the other side of that I dug a hole or watering hole for wildlife to have someplace to drink and whatnot but this is I mean you can listen to the birds. It's just a wildlife paradise over here. So the goal is to just mow all this down. All the seeds like I said all the grasses have gone to seed so it'll repopulate but we're going to mow all this down and then try and come back probably with the grapple on the tractor to grab all the big sticks and downed limbs and debris and stack them in such a way that we can cut them down to go into the chipper and then we will use the bigger sections of the storm debris on the bottom. Pile some grass on top of that. We'll mix in some wood chips. We'll mix in some of this the storm debris and basically we're going to take all this organic matter and make a big compost pile right here and walk away and forget about it for quite a while. So it does a couple things. Number one it cleans up this area from the storm debris. Number two it gives us a of nutrients that we can either spread out in the same location or take somewhere else to use on the property. But regardless we're going to clean this up. So Jamie's on loper patrol. She's walking around with the lopers to cut stuff a little bit more suitable to go through the chipper and then I'm going to mow. After I mow a little bit she's going to start raking up I guess. But this this is an incredible mower. An absolute incredible mower. I don't own this either one of these. This is the BalmaLite TRL630D mini skid steer. Really nice. It's got a lot of hydraulic flow on this machine and this is the FMM148 flail mower. Holy smokes does this thing do a good job. I the other day I cut like six foot tall really really thick really thick grass in one pass and it just mulched it and spit it out. This is an incredible machine. So yeah I guess I need to get to work and get to mowing and we'll see what happens. That is that's what you got to say about that. Wow that machine is impressive. I was cutting some really thick tall grasses and it just cuts it. And of course these Chinese privets are hanging down on the end of the area. Well just lift up the loader arm and go into it and drop it back down. You curl it away from you so all the action's away from you and it shields you from anything coming back. Nothing comes back at you. It wow it's just it's just an amazing piece of equipment. It really is. Jamie's got these grass piles all over the place. Got a bunch of them all over here. Got a bunch of these sticks and such staged over here for not only the chipper but for the base layer of our compost. We're going to take all the bigger sections not even worry about putting them through the chipper just get the bigger sections into a pile basically like building a raft. And we're gonna start stacking over here. All right this thing's had enough time to cool down let me turn it off real quick. So yeah a bunch of sticks right here as a base layer. Well not sticks but a bunch of the bigger sections right here as a base layer. All the smaller stuff will chip. I'll park the chipper right here so we can do a base layer of this. Grab one of these compost piles put that layer on top and then chip directly on top of it. Anything else we find we'll put on top of that as well. And we'll just leave this alone let it sit there and decompose. But we have we have quite oh she's talking to the radio. We use GMRS radios to communicate so Tyler's got a radio while we're out here working. Anywho this is this is nice this is really nice. I got one little strip right here I'll hit this on the way out to separate the ditch from the driveway. But just just an incredible piece of machinery. Like I said up here we actually went all the way to the to the road and did around our our driveway area. But this section right up here to the left we've never been able to get up there really and do any meaningful cleanup. And it's it just plows through stuff like all this overhang right here. I didn't want to hit the electrical line marker we have underground electricity through here and I leave these up to know where the lines are and whatnot. So I didn't get in here but you just grab that not grab it but you just mulch that and knock it down and just keep going. It's I mean it is just so impressive it really is. I think we're gonna break for just a minute to get some hydration. I'll come back with the tractor and what I found with these piles of grass the grapple on the tractor does a really good job just picking it up. So I'll pick up one set it on top of another one pick up both of those and set it on top of the next and the next and the next and just grab and go grab and go grab and go. And eventually you have all of the raked piles in one spot. I'll get all those moved over here probably move some bigger limbs and such that are that way towards the driveway towards towards the road. Bring them all back here and we'll complete the task. Let me jump in real quick and briefly talk about the sponsor of this video which is Brunt. So these are the Costello shorts just like the pants the Costello pants same thing in shorts form. All there is is a reduction in length pants versus shorts. Captain obvious statement there. But anyway these shorts are great they've got an extra amount of material over here on the pocket so if you clip a bunch of stuff to your pockets like I do whether you're right-handed or left-handed that extra material is there. It's got rip stop technology so it's woven in both directions so if you get a tear it's not going to continue to creep all the way across the fabric. It will stop and I know that will stop because I had a pair of the Costello pants get a tear in them eight months ago and they're still just fine with the same amount of tear in them. So the tear the rip stop technology does work. They're stretchy where they need to be stretchy so if you got to get down and be flexible for a minute well you can get down and be flexible if you have to. And they have a cell phone pocket on the right thigh which is pretty darn handy and convenient especially if you're sitting down to be able to access your phone without digging into your pockets. Anyway these are fantastic. I have basically switched over my entire uniform. I guess it's a uniform. All I have is four pairs of pants. All they are are the Costello pants from Brunt and now I have four pairs of shorts. These are the Costello 11 inch inseam shorts from Brunt. You can get these shorts in 11 inch inseam or a I believe it's a nine inch. Don't quote me on that but two different lengths for the shorts. So if you like a little bit shorter shorts you can use those or you can have that option as well. But like I said I switched all my stuff over to these Costello pants and shorts because I know from experience how durable they are and I just want repeatability. I don't care about any type of fashion at all although these are pretty nice clothing. I want all of my work uniform I guess you could say to be the same every single day. So a little while ago I got four pairs of pants and then just recently I purchased four pairs of the Costello shorts to match because I want repeatability. I want comfort every single day and I want something that's durable and going to last. I'm sold on these I really am. Speaking of sold on them when I was doing the checkout process to buy these I put four of these in my shopping cart and then I found the section on their website where they have deals and they had a deal for four pairs for the price of three. So I took off those four and I bought the bundle for four for the price of three. So if you want to buy quite a few of these whether the pants or the shorts or maybe mix and match some other stuff check out their bundles page. They've got all kinds of bundles where if you buy more than one item you can save a little bit of money. Anyway these are the shorts the Costello shorts. I love them. I think you'll love them. They're fantastic. They're comfortable and they're not crazy hot here in the summertime in Mississippi. So I love that. Thanks to Brunt for supporting this video and I'll have a coupon code that you can use to save a little bit of money on your first purchase. There's a little scanny thing on the screen somewhere here and there's a link in the description. Check those out. Thanks again Brunt. You guys take care and let's get back to the video. The tractor and grapple is just a lovely combination. Sometimes I think about how blessed we are in today's age to have all of these hydraulics and you know engines all this stuff to do a tremendous amount of work in a little amount of time with very very little physical effort. Imagine imagine going back a couple hundred years ago when you're trying to settle a property like this with just you know you didn't have electricity right you you work all day and you go home and you you light up the the kitchen area to cook with with the lantern you know what I'm saying my how times have changed and I am very very thankful for all the hydraulics that I have access to pile of freshly cut greens grass you know we have all of these branches nice and laid out they're not piled up to where I got to fight them all of these as well as all of this and then over here uh we have let me spin around 180 up there is my turnaround tree at the beginning of the driveway it's a beautiful hickory that just goes in 17 different directions it's one of those trees where I imagine it was cut off low years and years ago and when you cut something low and just walk away from it trees anyway they'll grow back out of that stump most of them and they'll grow out with many fingers many more branches bugs go away bugs go uh and then they'll just go and go and go and go and go and that's what that hickory did up there well it took some pretty some uh some abuse during the ice storm and this is one of the biggest limbs that was on it that uh well it broke off but you can see the size of this thing it's a pretty decent size I don't want to use this for what we're about to do but I do want to pull it off and get it out of the way uh that way I can come back with the grapple and tractor and take it back that way as a matter of fact when I just parked the tractor I don't know why I didn't take this thing with me but this is easy to cut up into rounds for firewood specifically for smoking wood I'm a big fan of smoking meat with hickory oh yeah love it but all this other stuff what I'm going to do is I brought all my chainsaw stuff with me uh chainsaw and chaps so I'm going to start with the big stuff and get it you know five or six feet lengths and that way we can stack a base layer of five or six uh foot long stuff on the bottom right there and then we can alternate between grass clippings going in and I parked the chipper right here to just blow right on the top of it hopefully the uh this is a beast of a chipper hopefully this airflow isn't so much that it blows this grass around this is the uh splitfire 4090 it's a nice chipper it's a gravity fed chipper big hopper that I pile up stuff for transport here I've got a my chaps for the chainsaw and then I got some small itty bitty off cuts that were just uh trash from making stickers on the sawmill so I'll run those through first and then we'll start to get all the smaller stuff and yeah we're about to make a about to make a big old compost pile and walk away for a while uh not necessarily high I guess one layer thick maybe maybe two at the most it's okay if it's quiet we just don't want to go too tall with it doing good so far doing good this will all get steamy and hot last time we mixed uh fresh greens with chips oh yeah it was cooking um ran out of gas I don't have any gas on the property so it sucks but I got to take a break and go get some gas belt the belt is burning which means we're locked up it ran out of gas mid cut and this little piece was wedged onto the uh onto the blades so that stopped it from cranking back up while engaging the clutch just burnt the belt for just a second hopefully this little guy didn't damage the belt too much take two how was your day today good exhausting it's pretty hot this looks much better much better we're just gonna let it grow back and do it again I guess but I uncovered the trailhead going into the trails that was covered in storm debris so it felt good to get that out this pile of debris was an old fire that I just left for nature to take over and we already found one snake out here so that's pretty cool just a little harmless green snake and uh oh before I get to that look at all the holes in this walnut tree like a woodpecker I think that's a woodpecker or some type of uh some type of bug making all those holes uh but anyway we have the pile of do nothing we're gonna do nothing it's gonna do something but next year we'll have a pile of debris and it's about belt high so pretty good little pile there uh pretty good mix of greens and browns half of the stuff that I chipped was down for quite a while so it was dry the other half was probably a little bit wet I did chip a bunch of uh things that had green uh green leaves on them as well so that's pretty cool all of this just opened up again I gotta take that log back up there I don't know why I didn't when I put the tractor away but it's me so that explains it so scatterbrained nice clean area up to their old fire pile once again that I left for wildlife and then right just to the left of this tree on that sunny spot over there that's that water hole that I was talking about uh somebody in the comment section mentioned I should do this last year the year before is a while ago I should dig a little hole for water for wildlife over here so that's exactly what I did a little hole and as they say in Lilo and Stitch we're just you know trying to recover the endangered species of mosquitoes so there's that but all this is real dense there's all kinds of uh little bird nests everywhere through here so that's pretty cool to see other than the fact that it's Chinese privets that's not cool to see this tree was dead standing and I'm like you know what I got my chainsaw out here so I might as well take it down I'm not gonna process or anything it's already rotten and destroyed it's not that big anyway we'll just kind of let it rot away right there and leave this cluster for the time being anyway leave this cluster as wildlife but at least I have once again identified where the stumps are in here it's just that one um yeah pretty productive day and rather than just simply mulching all this up and piling the sticks to burn we have something that's going to be an actual resource for us so that's a big positive that being said it is time for Kung Fu so we got to do some speed showers and get out of here we'll talk to you guys on the next one