Getting rid of logging slash

[rfc143]

I have a lot of 12 year old slash and sawmill refuse, I'd like to make go away. It's too soggy to burn; I have no place to bury it; I've looked at those grinder things but they seem to be $20k+, they're hydraulic;no place to rent one even if I had front hydraulics.
I had a guy with one price a small area and he wanted almost $3000 for less than 1/2 acre (half a day).
If one assumes my time is "free" are there any other options to turn this stuff back into "dirt"?

 

[mcfarmall]

Pile it up in an out of the way place and let nature do the rest. Good bait pile for termites. Your time isn't really free, but Mother Nature's is. Let her pay for it.

 

[WVH1977]

I was at my property yesterday in the rain burning the exact same kind of rotted up piles of wood. It can be burned. I stacked all mine with the tractor on top of existing stumps. Just make sure you build it so you can get air for the fire to breathe. I found dry sticks and built a little pyramid on the big pile and started the fire that way. As it grew I just kept adding to it until I was using the grapple to dump piles on top of it. It can take a while to get it going but once you have hot coals it will burn. I also find a couple of dry 24" length or so by 24" dia. or so of hardwood logs to put on top of the piles once they get to burning. Once those hardwood logs catch they will burn good and keep the fire going. Used all of my empty diaper boxes to start the fire stuffed with newspaper.



I have tons of that leftover logging slash on my new property. I am going to stack and burn all of it. I though about using a mulching machine also, but I have the time and once you get it burning you can get rid of a lot it. After I burn the piles down to ashes I will go back with the grader box and level the ashes out and any other organic material left behind.

 

[jeff9366]

When tree service cleared my residential lot they piled up 24" diameter Water Oaks immediately after cutting healthy trees, dirty stumps included. Poured on 15 gallons of diesel and ignited the pile.

"Pile" burned for the next eight days as they cleared and added to the pile, including a couple of days of light rain. One day, it started to die down a little. They gave the pile forced air with a battery powered debris blower and it started raging again.

I think you can burn it. Get a blower.

 

[teg]

...I have no place to bury it...

How can you NOT have a place to bury it??? You don't have a sloped area that you want to level out by digging the dirt out, filling the hole and mounding dirt on top of that? Then plant plants on it... Look up "Hugelkultur"

Here's one: Hugelkultur: Composting Whole Trees With Ease - The Permaculture Research Institute

 

[Oldpath05]

I'd say if your debris pile is out of sight, it's out of mind. In my area back in the woods where I hunt I've seen several old sawmill slabs from old sawmilling, my guess 1940s, they was size of a big house in the 70s, now there gone or not much left. Back then, 30s and 40s, people must of moved sawmills out in the middle of the wood and sawed the logs up there, but what'd they use for power, pto from old tractor, did tractors have pto, a rhetorical? for those who cant stand rabbit trails

But thats out in the middle of the woods where deer like to hang around, but my son's issue is from his shingle mill, not out of sight, 150' from his house, a shingle hair/sawdust pile, big has a house and no one wants, there have been a couple places that was interested, they'd bring a trailer truck in if my son had a big excavator to load it. This was done once ten years ago, a fly-by-night mulch making place took it, brought in a big excavator with thumb, twelve trailer truck loads went out, and only a matter of minutes did it take that excavator to load a trailer, one good scoop and it could load a dump truck.

 

[em14]

The way "Timber" outfits destroy your property and leave you with what looks like a war zone is just criminal. The land next to mine in Alabama was left in such a bad way I don't think it will recover for many years. Having been in the saw mill business many years ago we would have never operated this way. I will not allow a logger on my land even to enjoy the look of the very old Oaks etc. It is a shame the lack of pride now days!
Leo

 

[boggen]

sounds more like you want to get it all burned in a single once only fire.

drag the stuff out, re-stack it in more of a boom fire or tee-pee, prymid setup. and get a fire going. and let what it can burn burn. then once it is out, or down to coals move it around and get it gong again. it may take a few fires.

with the lumber up above ground (not a root ball under ground) get the fire going. it will dry out.

look at some youtube videos for burning out stumps. were they place a "funnel" large end down. it might help deal with stuff directly at ground level.

cut it up, toss on a burn pile and keep going. wait till fire gets going and slowly add wet stuff.

hmmmsss this is spring "wet season" of the year. summer more likely dryer stuff to be had.

 

[CalG]

With how I value fertile top soil, and the sever shortage of same in most of hilly parts of Vermont, I would do what I could to "salvage: that mess.

Simplest would be a grapple loader sized to make short work of the task. Maybe the grapple would be replaced with a crawler to grub out the roots.

Push the material up into rows, NOT PILES, at the edges of whatever you feel is the open areas. Do the "bury it all in soil to decompose thing" and then plant raspberries on it.

In 20 years the land will just show a low ridge. And YOU will have enjoyed 20 years of fresh raspberries! ;-)

 

[kevinwak]

A few years ago a road building company was working on one of the highways. They had a huge burning basket that the burnt all their trees and roots and junk in. It was probably 8 feet tall. 10 wide and 20 long and on skids. It was essentially a steel basket made of old pipe welded I think about a foot apart. This allowed the junk to be piled in and airflow from all sides, including the bottom and kept the fire burning hot. All the non burnables, such as Dirt from stumps, fell out of the basket to the ground and allowed the fire to keep burning strong.
You could try building a small version of this and burning. Of course with burning be safe, we are into forest and grass fire season here.

 

[Creamer]

You can burn it but why not let it decompose? I like CalG's idea of making a raspberry row. Mcfarmall is right - let nature do it's thing. It is amazing what nature will do and the organic matter is good for the soil.

 

[Creamer]

The other thing is around here I can rent a large shredder that will take 8" for a few hundred a day. It has it's own power but you would have to fuel it. Tows behind a pickup.

Still it is much easier to let mother nature take care of it. A little nitrogen fertilizer will speed the process some.

 

[clemsonfor]

You can rent a bobcat with that head up front for like $400 a day. Many places deliver. If I had to drive 2 hours to get one I'd drive it before I paid that kind of money.

 

[clemsonfor]

They had belt drives on them that ran the big belts. They moved the Mills cause they were small and moving the whole logs was more difficult than moving the mill to the wood.

 

[clemsonfor]

Times change. Equipment is totally different than 30 or 40 years ago.

Plus so many think they can handle their own timber sale and don't know how to hade a buyer or logger. This is where us foresters pay off ;-)

 

[clemsonfor]

I agree to, it will burn. Bring a full wheel barrow fulls of dry firewood and 5 to 10 gallons of diesel.

 

[brown40]

You can burn it but why not let it decompose? I like CalG's idea of making a raspberry row. Mcfarmall is right - let nature do it's thing. It is amazing what nature will do and the organic matter is good for the soil.

Once the wood has saturated and the soil biome moves in , it will quickly break down. I made three "hugulkultur" beds a couple years back that I haven't put berries in yet. In one spot a root ball/8" stump was not buried deep enough (3" out of ground)--this spring I can see the center beginning to break down. Until the first winter/soil saturation things will go slowly, but once the wood saturates completely the process will ramp up. Underground is where the decomposers do their work--wood can sit out in the sun soaking and drying for a long time before it weathers away. That said, you can burn anything with enough fuel, if you aren't into gardening.

 

[Looking4new]

Have you thought about making a stump/slash fence out of it? Just shove it over to the property line and leave it to rot on its' own. It will make a nice haven for small critters.

 

[JRobyn]

Would be nice if nature would hurry up and decompose my "slash pile" from the tornado about 5 years ago. It's only about 3/4 mile long and 50 yds wide. I had loggers cull out a bit of it, but the 40 deg slope where most of it is was a deterrent. That plus the tangles of widow-makers. Fortunately, it is mostly out of sight.

 

[Industrial Toys]

I stopped a girl that worked for the local resources dept and asked her to come over and look at our dying pine forest. We had a pre-commercial thinning done a few years back and the place looks like a war zone. She thought it looked GREAT!

The biggest problem is that the slash piles are always on top of stumps making it difficult to grab with a grapple. Stumps make it difficult to get around, plus uneven (dangerous) terrain.