I have a lot of fallen trees on my property. Obviously I salvage what I can for firewood, but most of it is half rotten and not suitable for either firewood nor building.
I clean it up into piles in the fall and spring and burn it in the winter. And I made a hugelkultur mound that used some of it. But there’s sooo much, and I’d rather do something better than just burn it.
Any ideas?
We do all of the above. I burn good stuff to make maple syrup, put it in the bottom of new raised beds, build mounds for my wife to garden on, and burn a small amount. I occasionally bury some as well.
We have a good deal of wind, so we use it to stuff into the bottom of the hedges. As an added bonus it provides habitats for a lot of insects.
We’re similar. We only have a little wood burner, but will be doing maple over wood instead of propane turkey fryers next year so hopefully that will use some up.
I like to keep a pile of branches about 300 cu ft for no-dig mortality composting in case something medium sized dies. Infinitely easier than burying. If our luck is good and a pile starts to rot I chip it and start a new one.
Hugel mounds for sure, and this year I’m cutting into any soft logs, putting cut side down so they get good and gross for next year’s hugel beds and mushrooms.
If it keeps going like last winter I’m just going to start making rough cut benches everywhere. Who doesn’t like a bench?
I’ve thought about benches and stuff too lol. Also considered making a three sided enclosure for the compost pile out of logs, just stacked like Linkin logs. It would last a few years and then just turn into compost itself. Then I can add another layer of logs on the outside.
That’s a great idea too, we have a lot of random mounds because we mostly mulch by rotating where we dump horse stalls and the spring cleanup of the sheep/goat deep bedding. It’d be nice to keep them all from spreading downhill a bit better.
I mean, if you like the aesthetic of dead rotting wood you could epoxy it and make whatever you want really. But honestly as far as practical value goes charcoal is probably about it.
Charcoal is actually a great idea, but I don’t have any use for it.
