peds

I've got a good few hundred kilos of hawthorn sat in a heap in the middle of a field to deal with, and I'm not sure I've got the space to hide it all, so I'll definitely have to invest in the welders gloves. I guess the only acupuncture-free solution is to drop five figures on a much bigger chipper and have a fella feed it in with a grab on an excavator. But then I'd have to find something else to offer a temporary distraction from the other pains in my life.

That might be a solution... get in touch with a decent chainsaw carver, turn it into a priceless work of art, split the profits. Giant Lion Carved From Single Tree By 20 People In 3 Years Becomes The World's Largest Redwood Sculpture | Bored Panda WWW.BOREDPANDA.COM A giant wooden sculpture of a roaring lion now stands proudly in a Central Chinese city square, and the journey it took to get...

Hawthorn comes in many different shapes and sizes of course, it'll chew up long straight bits with no kinks no problem at all, but as soon as you add a bend or or two you have to manipulate it a lot more to get it down the tube, and the fact that it's a thorny bugger makes the wrestling a lot harder. The problem definitely isn't on the machine's side, it's a human issue. A heavy wax jacket and welder's gloves would fix it. Alternatively, dig a little deeper and find the cheapest option with feed rollers. This machine is fed only by gravity and elbow grease.

No no, not true. They are here come rain or shine.

I made a short time-lapse earlier of using the machine, but I can't upload it direct to here. I'll see if I can get it up elsewhere. Anyway, if you are chipping nothing but soft and brittle goat willow all day, then this wee chipper works like a dream. Anything with a bit of bite like holly or hawthorn though, honestly I'm just going to snip it up and poke it under a hedge. With no feed rollers, getting anything other than perfectly-prepped sticks in is a big of a physical affair. But big, straight sticks that you can wrestle into submission, she goes just fine. I've been dropping in 10cm logs and they get chewed up without the machine slowing down at all. It gives much smaller chip than bigger chippers, see photo of hand for scale. The chip will break down faster of course, meaning paths etc. will need to be topped up more often. I've gotten around the chip shitter being too low to the ground by using it on a pallet and shooting it into an old dustbin I found buried under the hedge, which then gets tipped into the wheelbarrow. Obviously this arrangement looks a bit too jonky for any professionals to consider, unless you can buy a fancy orange bin and shtick a Husqvarna logo on it or something.

Very helpful, thanks for that Dan.

Noone is willing to put a price tag on it? Feel free to highball it if you want!

Does it still work if the logs are facing the other way?

John Downie, thanks for the variety suggestion. It has been noted. All of the others you mention definitely have a place with the exception of sweet chestnut, which I don't think do particularly well around my way (which is a pity), and pear, which I'm thoroughly unenthusiastic about. I've never been excited about a pear the same way I have about an apple, for example.

Not really, the whole berm from which they are growing is being moved over a metre to the east. I'm fairly sure that a lot of it will bounce back from the rootstock anyway, the goat willows will just laugh it off and be five feet tall by this time next year. Some of the hawthorn and holly too, I imagine. But it's being replanted with a wider variety of species, including a load of fruits and nuts, and a few trees I've got in my own nursery now.

We've bought a narrow strip of land in the adjacent field so we can widen the track by about 1.5m all the way down. I have a fella coming with an excavator to flatten the current berm into the old drain in the field next door, and dig out a new drain, the earth of which will be piled up between lane and drain to build a new berm, and we'll be tapping new fenceposts in on the way back down. So I'm hoping most of the stumps will get dropped into the old drain and buried, and some of them will be able to sit in the berm or on top of it, for habitat creation, and to rot down into the soil and provide precious nutrients for the new hedge. The biggest ones that can't be left where they are will be carried up to where my chickens will live, again for habitat creation for chicken food. They'll be thrilled. I also have one really good sized bit of goat willow which is big enough to try and carve a little 2-seat bench out of when on its side. There's sheep wire embedded on one side, so I'm not bothered about adding it to the immense pile of firewood.

Covid has been great for spare time, I reckon we should have a couple of months of lockdown every year from now on.

The wire has been snipped out and is in a heap by the gate, waiting to go to scrap. Obviously the bits embedded in the trees are still there, and are being cut around, with the worst bits being replaced after the new hedge is planted, in the name of habitat creation. Six telegraph poles in total, they are the future shed. The trees were growing in and around the wire, most of them are down now. I've been at it about 5 days now, I reckon I've got another 5 to go. No burning, anything too much of a ball-ache to send through my adorable little pocket chipper (hawthorn, mostly) is going to be snippedand shredded, by hand, back on top of the new berm after the laneway has been widened, to help build the new soil. All 100m will probably take another full day. We'll not be buying firewood or woodchip... it's literally growing out of the ground, right there. We are aiming for a zero waste, self sufficient, home-grown sort of approach, dig?

I want the chip in a neat little pile next to the future shed, thanks, not scattered across the laneway we are resurfacing. The job is half done by now, I'm just looking for a rough idea of what I can invoice my wife for.

Yo what up dudes, Anyone want to pluck a number out of their arse for me? What would you be looking to quote for taking out 100m of overgrown agricultural hedge; goat willow, ash, holly, hawthorn, gorse, bramble; 4-6m high the length of it, a few of the ash and willow up to 10m. Anything for firewood left in heaps, all chip dropped further up the lane on site. Sheep wire and barbed wire embedded in some of the bigger stems. Humour me, we are building a house and improving this lane is the first step, we'll try and keep a tally of what we spend, and what we save by doing it ourselves. You never know, if I save us enough cash I might get a bonus from the wife. 100m of the hedge on the left there. Cheers all.

It's a real shame that this thread was only bumped for some spam, and I, like all of you, am left dissatisfied and hungry for a resolution. But just for future reference, on a rock climbing harness, that black loop behind the 'biner joining the waist band and the leg loops is the tie-in point, and can absolutely be tied into directly. That's what it's there for. If you are reading this, TommyK from four years ago, just clip the biner on the left directly to the tie in loop instead of giving it some metal on metal.

True, but the hatchet has sat unhandled for over a decade, the Fermanagh potato spade probably at least twice that. They can sit and wait a while longer without causing too much hassle.

If it were left on for long enough the growth below the head would form a natural shoulder. Then you could wedge in from above same as a normal axe handle. Maybe.

Howdy, I'm about to replace a shaft on an axe, and I got to thinking about something a colleague was telling me a while ago about a little used and, possibly, rather pointless technique of replacing handles on various bits of kit, whereby you slot the hole in the metal over an appropriately-sized branch or sapling and wait a few years. I'm just going to replace the shaft on the axe as usual, but I'm going to give it a try on a few other old things I've got lying around: an old cheap fork that deserved to break, a rusty little hatchet I found, a forked hoe, a Fermanagh potato spade, and a forestry planting spade that had a bad day. I don't or didn't use these things on regular rotation, so I'm not that bothered if the end result isn't rock solid. It's just to have a go really, and see what the results are like. Anyone heard of this technique, anyone tried it, any obvious problems that you might encounter and what you could do to solve them? Obviously after waiting for the wood to fill the gap, harvesting, and leaving to dry there would be a bit of shrinkage, but wedging as usual should fix that, right? The oval hole in the little hatchet would take longer to fill out than the round and tapered holes of the garden tools, but that might actually result in a stronger finish... maybe? Probably going to use ash as I've got a fair few candidates available, but I'm going to keep an eye out for a decent bit of hawthorn as well, although that might take a good while longer to fill out. Interested to hear any opinions or advice about this.

I can dig it man, you're speaking my language. And with a historial name, among others, like "all-heal", I'll defintely be trying to spike a few seeds into my own trees as soon as I find a source (it's rare enough here in Ireland, I think). But it's not a plant that you hear much about with regards to people trying to propagate it. It's interesting to hear why people are into it. I hadn't of heard this. Suuuper interesting. "Female common cuckoos are divided into gentes – groups of females favouring a particular host species' nest and laying eggs that match those of that species in color and pattern." Incredible.

On a serious note though, how big is the chunk with the nest in, has it been processed yet? Get in touch with your local beekeepers association, there are people out there who'd pay for a chunk of hollow stem like that, previously used by bees. They are perfect for making natural hives or for people taking a hands-off approach.

Any bees left? I have an empty hive, shtick a handful in an envelope and I'll give them a home.

Can I ask why people are so keen on having it, or are willing to put so much time and effort into trying to grow it? Is it purely for sale at Christmas markets, or are some of you brewing tea with it to help with hypertension and epilepsy (or some of the many other claimed ailments it works for...)?

Yo, Still plugging away with it, it hasn't fallen apart yet. The discharge is annoyingly low to the ground, so I've taken to lifting it onto a pallet so I can get more through it before the pile of chip needs sorting. This wouldn't be an issue if I was firing it into a dedicated pile on hardstanding, as I intend to once the house is built, but at the moment I'm firing it into ton bags so I can drag it straight to the area that I'm mulching (location for future vegetable beds and polytunnel). I've removed the outer plate covering the discharge chute, as I'm fairly sure the manufacturers expect you to do, and it's a thousand times more efficient. There's also a rubber collar guarding the limb chute that lasted a couple of hours before it got dragged down into the chipper, it should have been taken off before I even used it. It claims up to 10cm, it'll defintely do that if the bits are straight as a die, but the size and shape of the limb chute really wouldn't cope with anything a bit twisted at that girth. I'd happily recommend it because after all the reading I'd done, it is defintely the biggest and most capable machine that was available at my price point, but it'll be interesting to see how long it lives. I'll get some more photos and video of it in action the next time I'm up there. edit The shredder up top asks for nothing chunkier than 1cm, but it seems to handle things a bit bigger just fine.

No don't stop, you can squeeze another three pages out of this, minimum. I say it's oak and I'll fight anyone who disagrees, though to be honest I'm plucking a choice out of my hole.