Large amount Coppiced hedgerows for Biomass-- Value???

[Jameshenry]

Most useful recent invention for processing hedges is the branch logger but still requires relatively clean hedge material but will handle the odd staple whereas a chipper suffers badly from the normal farm habit of securing wire to the hedge rather than a fence post.

Just had a look at branch loggers, look to be very labour intensive and slow if there was any amount to process

 

[renewablejohn]

Just had a look at branch loggers, look to be very labour intensive and slow if there was any amount to process

You can get them with conveyors to fire the output straight into trailers. Bigger ones can be crane fed.

 

[Goweresque]

...... where to start !

I’m well are of the carbon cycle, I even won some “soil carbon farmer of the year” thingy a couple years ago I also aware of climate change and the contribution co2 is making ..... .But in summary

Carbon in the air is a bad thing

Carbon in the soil is a good thing

As farmers we can do a lot tot help but not by lighting bonfires that’s for sure !

Well you provide me with a costed way of dealing with hedge material that at the very least breaks even then, I'm all ears. And in relatively small amounts, as its an ongoing process - its taken me 10 years virtually to slowly chomp my way though probably the best part of 10 km of hedges. No forgetting that this material often contains wire and other remnants of old fences etc.

I don't want to set fire to it, I don't have a Swan Vesta fetish. But having looked into it I can see no way of dealing with this stuff that is in any way practical and financially viable, other than removing the large stuff by chainsaw and selling for logs and burning the rest. All the other methods of processing it are very expensive, either requiring the hiring in of large equipment such as big chippers or tub grinders, or requiring extensive labour to operate cheaper slower equipment. Plus all this has to take place in the winter, when the ground conditions are not conducive to heavy equipment operations.

Unlike you I don't have a pool of labour doing nothing for the winter who you can use as 'free' labour on these sort of projects. Its either down to me, or I pay someone contract rates to do the work. And when the alternative is a few hours of my time, the telehandler I already own, and and a box of matches, that isn't going to fly.

 

[renewablejohn]

Well you provide me with a costed way of dealing with hedge material that at the very least breaks even then, I'm all ears. And in relatively small amounts, as its an ongoing process - its taken me 10 years virtually to slowly chomp my way though probably the best part of 10 km of hedges. No forgetting that this material often contains wire and other remnants of old fences etc.

I don't want to set fire to it, I don't have a Swan Vesta fetish. But having looked into it I can see no way of dealing with this stuff that is in any way practical and financially viable, other than removing the large stuff by chainsaw and selling for logs and burning the rest. All the other methods of processing it are very expensive, either requiring the hiring in of large equipment such as big chippers or tub grinders, or requiring extensive labour to operate cheaper slower equipment. Plus all this has to take place in the winter, when the ground conditions are not conducive to heavy equipment operations.

Unlike you I don't have a pool of labour doing nothing for the winter who you can use as 'free' labour on these sort of projects. Its either down to me, or I pay someone contract rates to do the work. And when the alternative is a few hours of my time, the telehandler I already own, and and a box of matches, that isn't going to fly.

I dont think people realise just how much metal is hidden in a typical hedge but you soon find out when you put it through a chipper. Certainly not prepared to send my chipper out on hedges unless I am there with it to supervise what is actually going through the machine.

 

[Clive]

So are clippings from tree surgeons worth having?

Yes - any additional carbon is worth having and returning to the soil

We all farm carbon, it’s what fathers do, use land to turn sunlight and water into carbon - it’s what we all sell !

Never let it leave your farm without being paid for it ! Burn it and it’s leaving for free

 

[Clive]

Well you provide me with a costed way of dealing with hedge material that at the very least breaks even then, I'm all ears. And in relatively small amounts, as its an ongoing process - its taken me 10 years virtually to slowly chomp my way though probably the best part of 10 km of hedges. No forgetting that this material often contains wire and other remnants of old fences etc.

I don't want to set fire to it, I don't have a Swan Vesta fetish. But having looked into it I can see no way of dealing with this stuff that is in any way practical and financially viable, other than removing the large stuff by chainsaw and selling for logs and burning the rest. All the other methods of processing it are very expensive, either requiring the hiring in of large equipment such as big chippers or tub grinders, or requiring extensive labour to operate cheaper slower equipment. Plus all this has to take place in the winter, when the ground conditions are not conducive to heavy equipment operations.

Unlike you I don't have a pool of labour doing nothing for the winter who you can use as 'free' labour on these sort of projects. Its either down to me, or I pay someone contract rates to do the work. And when the alternative is a few hours of my time, the telehandler I already own, and and a box of matches, that isn't going to fly.

Just put it in a pile and wait - will take a long time but no more cost than building a bonfire fire - it will provide a fantastic habit forwildlife and insect over the years it takes to compost, that will also benifit your farm

If you want to wait less chip it and leave it in a pile and turn it a couple of times, within a few weeks you have some utter gold for your soils at relatively little cost

You buy in and spread fertiliser I suspect ? Carbon is no different so worth some investment

Would you burn you soils or give them away ? Burning carbon in a bonfire is doing just that

 

[mo!]

Has anyone got any figures for hire of chippers etc to process overgrown hedges? Something that could be loaded with a tree shear ideally. We have a few hundred metres a year to do.

 

[Kevtherev]

Has anyone got any figures for hire of chippers etc to process overgrown hedges? Something that could be loaded with a tree shear ideally. We have a few hundred metres a year to do.

You can buy a large ish PTO chipper 9inch or larger for between £4-8k depending on make.
Hedge brash is quite difficult to feed into smaller chippers though.

 

[mo!]

You can buy a large ish PTO chipper 9inch or larger for between £4-8k depending on make.
Hedge brash is quite difficult to feed into smaller chippers though.

Something like this would work. The investment would be frightening but it solves many of the issues with other systems I have seen. I'd want to see some bigger rubber under it though.

 

[woodworm]

Has anyone got any figures for hire of chippers etc to process overgrown hedges? Something that could be loaded with a tree shear ideally. We have a few hundred metres a year to do.

At Suffolk Woodchips we have a fleet of self propelled crane fed chippers up to 24" diameter capacity together with harvesters fitted with coppice felling heads. The felling heads are not the same as conventional timber harvesting heads and are used to cut the stems and lay them out for our chippers. We pay for all material green and run a hot (just in time) system - fell, chip, remove straight to weighbridge
We are happy to talk to anyone in East Anglia about buying arb type chip or tops from forestry thinning and clearfell operations leaving clear ground for replanting or underplanting and saving the cost of getting a mulcher in to dispose of the unused part of the tree.
Coppice, poplar, leylandii, all problem trees to some, but to us they are all usable.
Feel free to give me a call on 07881 904100 to discuss in more detail.

 

[browny88]

Expect to pay £120-150 an hour for a trailed large crane fed chipper on a 200hp+ tractor.
In virgin timber you’re talking 20- 25t an hour. Maybe 15-20 in hedgerow clearance. We’ve used one a few times for just that and it feeds into our chip boiler just fine. Thorn burns beautifully in it! Leave it piled up for a year or more and it’s excellent cheap biomass.

 

[mo!]

Expect to pay £120-150 an hour for a trailed large crane fed chipper on a 200hp+ tractor.
In virgin timber you’re talking 20- 25t an hour. Maybe 15-20 in hedgerow clearance. We’ve used one a few times for just that and it feeds into our chip boiler just fine. Thorn burns beautifully in it! Leave it piled up for a year or more and it’s excellent cheap biomass.

So you'd need it heaped up?

 

[browny88]

So you'd need it heaped up?

Ideally. Tree shear it down with an excavator or chainsaw it etc but then pile it up (neatly if possible) let it dry out and then you can just pull up next to the pile and run the lot through a chipper.

 

[farmerm]

Chip or shred it and mix it with some FYM if avaible

Article about compost by @Simon C in the next issue of Direct driller magazine that’s well worth a read

I would happily compost chipped material but given fire or the time and cost of hiring and running a chipper I think I have to choose fire.. what does chipping wood cuttings cost per ton of DM? fire may even be more carbon neutral than composting. Chipping means burning disel to transport the chipper, burning disel to run the chipper, burning more disel to transport and spread the compost and lets not forget the CO2 released in the manufacturing of the the chipper. Yes carbon will remain in the compost but much of this will eventually be released back into the atmosphere, especially with my current full till cultivation set up.. top soil is only ever a temporary CO2 sink.

 

[mo!]

Ideally. Tree shear it down with an excavator or chainsaw it etc but then pile it up (neatly if possible) let it dry out and then you can just pull up next to the pile and run the lot through a chipper.

More work is what I'm thinking. I'd like to keep the carbon on farm, in fact I'd chuck it in for bedding and let the cattle mix it with FYM! It's tempting to hire a towed chipper and pull it behind a grain trailer and hand load but it would be sloooow. You can spend a lot of time messing about to save a little bit of work though. The 8" pto chippers for 1.5k on eBay look tempting compared to hire but must be carp for that money?

 

[woodworm]

Something like this would work. The investment would be frightening but it solves many of the issues with other systems I have seen. I'd want to see some bigger rubber under it though.

Like this?

 

[Goweresque]

Ideally. Tree shear it down with an excavator or chainsaw it etc but then pile it up (neatly if possible) let it dry out and then you can just pull up next to the pile and run the lot through a chipper.

Brushwood needs chipping asap, before it dries out, otherwise it goes incredibly brittle and you end up with a right mess. Piling it up prior to chipping is a problem as well, as all you end up with is a tightly wedged mass of wood that its impossible to do anything with other than a huge chipper you can grab it into.

This is the problem with dealing with overgrown hedges, its not the getting the stuff on the ground thats the problem, its the dealing with it afterwards in a reasonably economical manner that doesn't leave the ground looking like a war zone. Hedge management has to be done at the wettest time of year as well, which limits what you can do considerably

This is the method I've developed over 8 years of experimentation - excavator tree shear to cut the material, and sort it into two lines - pure brushwood and larger stuff for chainsawing. No need to be a perfect split but removing 80% of the brushwood speeds up chainsawing no end. Clear the brushwood line asap if the ground is dry (telehandler and muckfork/grab), or when the ground is frozen, or at worst in the spring when ground dries. Leave larger stuff to be dealt with over the winter as that can be done when the ground is too wet to travel with heavy machinery, and other work is on hold. Pile the sawn logs tight to the hedge, when ground dries up in spring use telehandler to push up any remaining brushwood and then trailer the sawn logs away. Finally use a tine harrow as a kind of garden rake to collect all the twigs lying around into lines and dispose of that too.

Done right you can hardly see where you've been working once the grass starts to grow in the spring. Most of the equipment other than the tree shear is farm type, and excavators with shears are more common for hire/contract than they used to be. The alternative to a shear is to use a hedgecutter to reduce the thinner bits of the hedge as much as possible and chainsaw down the larger stems only, followed by same process as above.

 

[renewablejohn]

I do it slightly different in two passes. Again using a tree shear on an excavator I take out all brash and branches less than 2 inch and feed it straight into my MB Trac with Heizohack chipper and side empty skip. 2nd pass is with the forwarding trailer with tree shear now attached to forwarding crane taking out 3 mtr log lengths with greater than 6 inch taken out with chainsaw but still loaded onto forwarding trailer.

 

[Goweresque]

I saw this machine on youtube, looks like a decent option for processing hedge material, being a sort of combination of woodchipper and branch logger:

 

[Hilly]

If closer I would have it all to compost

Could i turn sitca spruce brash into compost ?