Woodchip tales

We have a JCB wood chipper that we share with a croft neighbour. It’s an absolute beast of a machine.

Today there was a gap in the rain and we decided to take the opportunity to chip a few tons of brash ready for the growing season. Tree limbs and cuttings have been piled up all over the croft over the winter and it was well overdue time to clear up. Don’t worry, we’ve left enough piles for wildlife.

We take all the right precautions - heavy gloves, ear defenders and eye protection - but the chipper still scares me a bit. It literally eats tree limbs like butter. I’m guessing that a degree of cautious respect (read terror) is normal after watching too many films where chippers are used to dispose of bodies on remote farmsteads..

Woodchip is such useful stuff. We use it as a mulch on the grow beds and around the base of our young apple trees where it slowly rots down into the soil whilst protecting plant roots from the worst of the frosts.

We also use it in our compost where it adds essential brown matter and carbon to the mix, and on the floor of the polycrub where it provides an absorbant organic flooring that is soft and comfortable underfoot. We top it up every year and I love the woody smell that it gives off as it warms through in the sunshine.

When we first moved to the croft and didn’t have a chipper we used to buy tonne sacks of woodchip in at some cost, so it’s especially satisfying to now be able to make our own from local croft brash and hedge clippings.

There’s something very cyclic and strangely satisfying about returning goodness to the soil from things that grew in that soil.