I went a little nuts with the chain saw a few weeks ago and wound up with a massive pile of cedar trees and limbs. The chipper turned them in chips so it’s time to gather rocks to line the trail.

We’ve added another 40-50 feet to the hiking trail. Lots of rocks and tree roots in this stretch so it was slow going.
The illustration below is a rough approximation of the trails path. I’m as far down the hill as I can comfortably go so we’ll be heading back up the hill (toward the road).

We added another 40 or 50 feet to the hiking trail today. I remind myself (and others) that this project (?) is more about clearing cedar trees than creating a trail. Cedar trees are the crabgrass of the woods. They choke out almost all other trees. I quickly discovered I enjoyed cutting them with my trusty chainsaw, but getting rid of them hard work. As noted in previous posts, the wood chipper changed that. But I quickly generated big piles of wood chips and that was when the idea of making a hiking trail “paved” with cedar chips came to me.

My routine goes something like this:

1. Use marking paint to flag the trees to cut
2. Fire up (battery powered) the chainsaw and cut the marked trees
3. Drag the trees/brush to a pile near the wood chipper
4. Fire up the chipper
5. Line the hiking trail with rocks to keep the chips from washing away. Works better than you’d think.
6. Drag the chips to the end of the trail, dump and rake.

The rocks part is the most physically demanding. There’s no shortage of rocks on our property but there’s no easy way to get them to the trail. It usually comes down to picking them up one at a time and carrying them to the end of the trail.

I find all of this satisfying in a way I can’t describe. Mindless, physical activity out in the woods with no clear plan for where the trail leads.

After cutting –the fun part– everything has to be dragged to a pile near the chipper. Less fun.

Final step before chipping is clipping the limbs to get the trunk < 3 inches.

After an hour of chipping I had enough chips to extend the trail 30 or 40 feet.

As I move down the hill larger rocks (to line the trail) are harder to find so I’m sledding them  down the hill.