In the recent days a local tree trimming company came through our area, tasked by the power company, to trim tree limbs that were around all the power lines that are strung across the landscape. They even came down the long driveways on the different rural properties, also trimming. A tree branches, which was even better, so we wouldn't have to deal with the risk of an errant branch falling on our power lines, even on our properties. Afterward, the men would come back with shredders and claw crane attached trucks to grab the piles of limbs to run them through the shredders. This resulted in a lot of mulch. We asked one of the shredder crews if it was possible to dump a truckload of mulch by our place for use around here. They were more than happy to oblige. Instead of one truckload, they came back a couple times, dumping what looked like two more loads, piled together, yielding us a humongous pile of pine mulch with some other trees ground in for a little body. Now the next question was what the hell were we going to do with all this mulch? The only logical thing I could think of was to use the stuff to lay some pathways and ground coverings in places where there's grass, since it would take a lot of gravel to achieve the same goal. I had an idea of some areas I'd like to cover. With the aid of the neighbor's tractor, which has a front end loader, I was able to scoop up large amounts of the mulch to lay it in my intended areas, starting with the pathway between us and said neighbor friend. The next area was the pathway along the north fence, going through the woods. The unfortunate reality here was the idea that this was at the lower point in the grade of the land, so this area stays mushy year around. Dumping mulch on the ground was not enough to keep the tractor from tearing up the ground trying to go through here, so this will be one of those problem areas that will take a lot of work to build up before it could ever be capable of handling even small vehicular traffic like an ATV or even go kart. The next area was around the Shooting Range. My plan here was to lay a bed of mulch extending out from the Shooting Range into the yard, as well as behind the Range going into the woods where the area connects with the north fence pathway. I had already cleared the grounds through here of weeds and other trash so I could dump piles of mulch on the ground. The intent here was to get a sizeable amount of mulch staged around the area. I would come back over this stuff and spread it out by hand, since it's more of a pain trying to use the tractor to spread the stuff. Just like along the north fence, the ground here collects a little water, causing the ground to be soft here. It wasn't as bad as the north fence, but still bad enough that with repeated passings with the tractor, the ground did start getting torn up. At least I did dump a good number of mulch piles all around the area so I could spread them out and blend the piles together to create one large mulch bed. After this session of moving the mulch with the tractor, I did manage to make a decent dent in the removal of the mulch. I probably knocked about 1/3 to 1/2 of the total load from the piles, and I've already covered the shooting range area as well as the neighbor path. The north fence still needs a good amount of covering so that'll be the next area I'll finish up with. I'll probably start laying some mulch down along the east fence just as well, with the intent of trying to create some kind of barrier to the soft ground underneath. What this means is I'll be using the tractor yet again to clear the remainder of the mulch piles for the coverage of the mentioned areas. I do need to get this done, not only for aesthetics, but because this stuff is starting to ferment and give off steam, which would indicate its generating lot of heat within the piles. Even though it has rained over the area a couple times, the stuff is still composting, and the last thing I'd want to have to deal with is mulch/compost piles spontaneously combusting on us. These piles are pretty big so that type of accident would be a disaster. The sooner I get the mulch spread out, the sooner I can hopefully eliminate the risk of any kind of spontaneous combustion.
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