I have to just shake my head at buying a
chipper if you can burn it. Less time, money, energy and labor to burn it.
Many reasons actually.
It takes a lot of work: preparing a burn pit, grading a bit around it, dragging the material to the pit (it is never all nearby), and then the time
to burn it and babysit the fire until it is out (hours) and getting 'smoked up' a good bit. And also making sure you have water there - several 100 foot hoses hooked together at times. For most of the areas where you would logically burn there is no water source anywhere near close enough so that means bringing in 55 gallon barrels of water, and buckets, to a burn site by the tractor. We can move a
chipper from site to site easily, instead of dragging limbs and such to one burn site (at least one site at a time - and preparing more sites as necessary) as the distance increases. Also, we have at least two and usually four of us doing this. It is not the worse job - once we tried making smores - but it makes for a long day, eyes take a hit, and you just can't burn in some areas. And we have a whole lot to burn in areas where we cannot have water standing by - unless we lug 55 gallon barrels over some rough terrain at times - another PITA.
So, I am not sure that, as you say, it would involve less time and energy and labor to just burn it - but maybe less money. But I guess I could see your point if we did not have so much to burn and such a large area - 90 rolling and wooded foothill acres. And we can only burn at certain times - we have to check to see if it is a 'burn day' at our elevation before we can burn. And it is a short 'burn calendar'- just a few months when this is permitted and safe to do so. Anyway, we began to consider the
chipper option as we could not figure out a more practical way to get rid of the wood piled up all over 90 acres. It would be a job we would never finish.
And finally, earlier today - based on the comments here - I ordered the Woodland Mills WC68 wood
chipper. Went with your all advice and went with a PTO
chipper. Free shipping right now.