So two of us have now been clearing out a 10 metre 'fire safety' strip around my land - which necessitates flammable trees like pine being a maximum of 10 metres apart and all the lower limbs cleared to a height of four metres, and any hyper flammable brash cutting out - which here means Broom, shed loads of it.
We've so far done about an 80 metre strip up one border and are another 50 metres into the 'back strip', so about half way through and we've cut so much stuff out I'm actually running out of places to put it.
We started off by making five large hugel beds just off from the 10 metre border - the plan was to just let them rot down, but looking at them, they are really just massive tinder boxes of piled up tried twigs and logs....
I can't honestly see how this is going to pass a fire safety inspection if the GNR come round. I mean obviously the 10 metre strip is literally stripped - there wasn't much in there besides kindling and the odd small oak we've now 'saved' by giving the area lots more light - but piling up the brash doesn't to my mind seem to be much safer than just having the stuff growing?
And there's more - there's this 'MEGA hugel bed' here:
It's got to the stage now where I've just put the 'what to do with the brash?' question into the 'deal with it later category':
My got-to strategy ATM is to hire someone with a tractor and a chipper and just chip the lot - it might cost a couple of hundred EU to do that, but it'd probably only take a day or two and Wood chip is golden.
The problem with hugel beds is that I just don't have anywhere near sufficient material to cover them with - If I wanted some dirt I'd have to hire a digger to dig some out, put the brash in the hole, then cover with the dirt - but that's a lot of time and effort and probably more expensive than just chipping everything.
There's also the fact that I don't really need hugel beds - I already have a large annuals growing area and swale area which is more than adequate for any fruit I might want, and so for me, woodchip would be more functional as a mulch and feed system for what I've already got!
I think I may just have to stump up the cash, excuse the pun, and pay for chipping, unless anyone has any better ideas?!?
At least with chipping I can put all of this utter carnage to immediate use in replenishing the land!