Happiness is a Steaming Pile of Woodchips

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Have you ever noticed how when you decide on something you really want, I mean really decide on it down in your bones, the thing you asked for often comes your way? Call it abundance, or call it what you will, I have been fantasizing about having yards and yards of wood chips and all the things I would do with them since we bought our place. I have really strong feelings about lawns. I really don't believe in them. I am into mulching it, gardening it, or just letting it grow. It might be the stubborn utilitarian in me, but if you've got a yard, why waste any space not growing food? I did not want to be one of those folks out there mowing their acres of yard with a riding mower, wasting time and resources, and reducing habitat for native plants and animals, and decided we would keep our fields of tall grasses waving in the breeze. The only problem with that plan, however, is that out here the tall waving grasses are a lovely inviting home for the swarms and swarms of summer mosquitoes. The first evening out at our new house, I wondered if the realtor had tricked us!  There were mosquitoes unlike anything I had experienced. A merciful neighbor came over and mowed our field for us with his tractor, and the mosquito population was greatly reduced by the next day. So, I had to try and change my outlook on mowing. What a lot of lawn to mow, and with a push mower too.

Inspired by all the permaculture and Food Not Lawns yards I used to love on my walks around town, I decided we were going to take out that lawn, one garden bed and wood chip path at a time. But, how? Loads of woodchips cost a lot of money. The answer came when my husband and kids were on a bike ride near the local elementary school and saw a local tree service company leaving a pile of woodchips. He asked them about it, and they said that they have so many woodchips all the time that they always need places to dump them off. They gave him their business card, and I called them the next week. Early the next morning, they showed up with a truck and dumped an eight-yard pile of steaming pine chips in our yard. About an hour later, he returned with another pile. I told him he could keep on bringing them until we said "no more!"

I got right down to work with that woodchip pile. Warm steam was rising off of it in the early morning sunshine. It was a beautiful thing. I mulched the area all around the raised potato beds and raspberries, and made a path around the edge of the garden beds I had created all around the house back in the Fall.

I also mulched the muddy path around the nettle patch and fairy garden.

Then I got down with the sheet mulching. I collected cardboard produce boxes from Grower's Market and the recycling area behind Sundance Natural Foods, and spread them out on the other side of the path where I wanted a future garden bed to be. I covered these with straw and left them to do their mulching magic. In the Fall I will pile on all our leaves, and in the Spring, we will have good, rich soil for growing gardens.

Before

After

Before

After

Now that I have worked my way through the woodchip piles, I am eagerly awaiting more to come. I have plans to lay them around our greenhouse and compost area, between the native plants along the front fence that will someday be a hedgerow, and when they have some hardwood chips for us, I'll spread those around the play structure. My motto is just mulch it! It makes less mud, less lawn, more food and more fun!