Last week Ellie and I put a new-to-us tool to work for the first time. Our own wood chipper.

You may recall that two falls ago (2022), I borrowed our farmer’s wood chipper (and one of his giant tractors to run it). A little while after that, I was at our tractor dealership, and our sales guy said, “Hey did you ever get that brush pile cleaned up? We have a used chipper here, and your tractor could probably run it.”

Well, the brush was cleared, but I knew there would be more to come. After thinking about it for a few days (and with some encouragement from my sister), I bought it.

But up until this spring, I still hadn’t used the chipper yet. Though I had been rebuilding the brush piles.

So finally I asked our sales guy to come out, and he helped me hook up the chipper and made sure everything worked properly. And then we blasted through the branches.

The chipper worked so, so well. It handled big stuff, small stuff, green stuff, dry stuff. The chips are nice and small (our farmer’s chipper let a lot of sticks through). And it gives us great mulch to use in the gardens–much better than burning the brush as we’ve done in the past.

For anyone interested in the details, the chipper is a Wallenstein BX42. It can handle branches that are up to 4 inches, though at our farm that’s firewood. I probably chipped a few 3 inch pieces, and they went through just fine. Our Kioti CS2410 (24hp) tractor runs it easily.

The chipper is a useful attachment, and I’m glad that we have it. It’s a good way to clean up branches, which we always have here at the farm.

Do you have any new tools at your house? Do you use mulch in your gardens? Who else buys something, but then takes a while to use it?