I have a great idea!!!!!

[missouriboy]

I live in Missouri and with the price of corn and beans going up the farmers are pushing off more and more trees and sometime they have loggers cut the logs out first and then push it off and sometimes they don't. It is a huge waste they just push it all in a pile. I was watching this one day i get an idea. I was thinking of chipping it all for bio fuel it would be a great way to stop all the waste. I was thinking i could cut the logs out and chip the tops and everything else then all the farmer would have to do is push stumps and level the ground out and i would of done half the work for him. Have any of you guys done anything like that and could i make any money doing it and what would be a good chipper for this kind of job.

 

[Oldtimer]

I'd think a horizontal grinder would be the machine for the job. Then you could get into grinding stumps up as well. It's all money. Grind the clean stuff into fuel, grind the stumps into mulch, and then look into grinding municipal waste, construction waste, and the like.

Of course, a large horizontal grinder is BIG money. And a 20" sized chipper is more in the $20 to $50K range...and you'll need a way to feed them.

But I whole heartedly encourage you to look into it! Think twice, act once.

My choice for a horizontal grinder:

[video=youtube;Si8eKx2Mri0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si8eKx2Mri0[/video]

 

[Oldtimer]

CBI grinding stumps.

[video=youtube;LtnT2UrvhNg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtnT2UrvhNg[/video]

 

[northmanlogging]

The morbark and bandit tow behind chippers are both good stuff, but your going to want something much bigger like oldtimer suggested. There is an outfit or two out there that make a chipper with a grapple and conveyor to feed itself and load the waiting truck.

Equipment is all fun and good but you also have to have a market, is anyone locale buying biofuel? If thats a no you might want to reconsider. Word on the eenterwebb is that bio fuels don't pay much so you might just be breaking even after trucking. Don't forget some kind of skidder for moving logs and some kind of shovel/excavator/digger to feed the chipper, unless you plan on dragging this all by your massive hands.

Not a bad Idea but maybe you should research a little on why the farmers arn't doing this allready, they may be farmers but that don't mean they are stupid.

 

[imagineero]

I'd knock a few excalamation marks off that idea, and maybe keep thinking and see if you can't come up with a better one ;-)

The bio fuel market boomed, then collapsed in australia. There is no market now, everyone went broke. There are a few places like cane mills burning their slash to partly reduce their electricity bill, and a few small mills burning their sawdust and leftovers as a way to reduce their kiln operating costs, but mostly that's just to get them into the green books.

There were a lot of problems with wood as a bio fuel, but the long and the short of it is that chipping stuff up don't make into a better fuel. It just burns more fuel to end up with the same amount of BTU's. The other issues were just the normal issues you face with selling plain old firewood - drying it, transporting it, getting a quality timber (chipped pine is still rubbish no matter if you chip it) etc. People jumped on the badwagon and ignored these basic points. The end result was that a lot of wet low quality chip was transported with a lot of machinery cost associated with producing it, and it didn't burn worth a damn.

Shaun

 

[imagineero]

I guess it's worth adding that the whole biofuel/pellets/bricks etc is a great thing for developing countries. Places that have problems getting rid of waste, no resources, and abundant amounts of cheap labor are loving this sort of technology. If you've got nothing but time on your hands, being able to turn scrap into fuel means that you can not only buy some food to eat, but you can cook it too.

For most folks in developed nations it doesn't end up being economical. The cost of labor is too high in our countries, we don't have a lot of spare time, and we have access to relatively cheap fuel sources of better quality. It may well be a different story in the future though!

 

[forestryworks]

I highly doubt we wanna start picking clean every forest we work in just for biofuel.

We don't wanna be like Germany's Black Forest and be sterile and clean with sorry-assed soil fertility. Plus you'd have to find a way to undo the iron grip of Big Oil and Monsanto Corn & Soy.

Imagineero makes some good points, let us learn from them.

 

[2dogs]

Do you have the money needed for a grinder, excavator, trucks, etc? $500,000.00 would be a good starting point.

 

[Oldtimer]

American and Canadian forests have untold amounts of bio-fuel waiting to be utilized. In fact, I bet for every sawlog grade tree there's 5000 that are nothing but junk- bio-fuel grade.
Here in NH and Maine we could run our entire electric grid on forest sourced bio-fuel.
But the eco-nuts will never let it happen. Better to let it fall over and die or even better yet, burn.

 

[imagineero]

I think forestworks is onto it - you need to put something back into the soil. What's going to be next, fertilising the forest with fossil fuels? I was in NZ where they are very agressive with their cattle and their forestry. They laser level large tracts of land so they can be efficiently and cheapy irrigated and fertilised to get the maximum number of cattle per acre. Farms are often close to rivers, and the phophate and nitrate runs off into the water. Cadmium is present as a trace element in much phosphorous rock, and it builds in the soil. Anything that can't be grazed is planted for forestry. Pines are over planted, thinned, pruned, harvested early, buldozed and replanted in short cycles. After 2 or 3 re plantings the land is really good for nothing. It's just dry dust.

The other side of the coin is that bio fuel technology just doesn't quite seem to be there yet. Everyone who bought chip burners got burnt, at the residential, industrial and government level. If anyone can find something good to do with chipped whole trees please let me know though. I'm a small time tree guy so I only dump a few hundred truckloads a year. I can't get a dime for it, and sometimes have to drive 30 or 40 miles to give it away. There are a few thousand other tree guys in aus who are in the same position, and we'd all love to have something to do with our chip. Illegal dumping is becoming an issue. Landscapers, schools and councils can only use so much, and I haven't found many house owners willing to take a truck load.

Shaun

 

[Oldtimer]

I personally do not favor whole tree harvests, rather, I prefer to return the tops and limbs to the ground it came from. There are various ways of doing that. Cost effective ways are usually the most destructive though, i.e. dragging the entire tree out, delimbing and topping, then backhauling the residuals into the woods. I would prefer a very large controlled fell (fixed head) harvester head like the Quadco 5660...but the total package costs of CTL simply kill the idea for me. I do not have $500K for the equipment. So, cheap wheeled buncher, grapple, and L/S/D it is.
But for now, it's me and the Husqvarnas. And the woods are better off for it.

 

[northmanlogging]

While we're at it whats better stacking the brush, leaving it where it lays, or burn piles? I prefer to just leave it be (less work for me...) or stack it and let it rot, the burn piles leave to much room for oopsies to happen... even though they create exactly the same amount of co2(co1? never remember) unless you use an old tire and 50 gallons of diesel to get it going...but i would never do that right...

Back to the OP he was asking about the expansion of farm feilds, so my guess is they are going to go straight for the petro chemical ferilizers anyway. And therefore could care less about letting the wood rot. Does seem like quite the waste to let em lay there though.

 

[missouriboy]

The farmers around here don't really care about how much the trees are worth corn and beans are worth more then trees are. They just push trees and burn and it is a huge waste. the forest doesn't get any thing out of it because they are pushing it off. I just makes me sick to see that.

 

[forestryworks]

The farmers around here don't really care about how much the trees are worth corn and beans are worth more then trees are. They just push trees and burn and it is a huge waste. the forest doesn't get any thing out of it because they are pushing it off. I just makes me sick to see that.

And think of all the habitat loss, hydrologic changes, diversity lost to monoculture farming, soil loss, etc. That's what happens when land is managed as a commodity and corn is federally subsidized (used to be, subsidies expired this year? Not sure what the new farm bill holds).

The last figure I saw, we waste 40% of what we grow, yet we still have hungry folks in the States. Gotta love Monsanto corn and soy and chemically-saturated beef.

But that's the nature of the ag business world, and it was enough to make switch to grass-fed bison products.

 

[northmanlogging]

And think of all the habitat loss, hydrologic changes, diversity lost to monoculture farming, soil loss, etc. That's what happens when land is managed as a commodity and corn is federally subsidized (used to be, subsidies expired this year? Not sure what the new farm bill holds).

The last figure I saw, we waste 40% of what we grow, yet we still have hungry folks in the States. Gotta love Monsanto corn and soy and chemically-saturated beef.

But that's the nature of the ag business world, and it was enough to make switch to grass-fed bison products.

Two natural grain fed piggies currently fertilizing a large garden, three of them chickens with the hickory shirts on pooping eggs on a regular basis, lots of fruit trees, blackberries, raspberries, front yard slowly turning into one large raised bed garden, a root cellar, we occasionally do meat birds. about the only thing we buy is condiments, salad in winter, wheat, and beef...all this on 1/3 of an acre...

Note I'm working a deal to trade one pig for 1/4 of a beef. I did try to grow wheat but it takes timing and to much space (timing not time you have a 2 week window to plant in September)

So let the rest of the world choke on chemical food and twinkies, one bite of home raised home cured bacon and you'll never look back either...

OK rant over

 

[floyd]

You have pork. I can make a 1/4 beef for you if I sell the rest as well.

I have a steer just keeping the bull company until spring. He will dress around 300#.

Scottish highland, very lean meat.

 

[slowp]

All I do is plant a few trees every year....sigh.

I can't raise my own meat. I'd have a hard time with that, unless it was always escaping and causing trouble.

 

[floyd]

Maybe you need to be another purchaser of said steer.

I planted a few 20 yrs ago. Now i'm relying on natural regen. Working well for me.

 

[slowp]

Nope. That starts up a major expense. Buy 1/4 steer, must buy freezer, must buy generator, etc.

My natural regen just doesn't happen in the right places. The moving around of those has not been as successful as the Weyco seedlings.

 

[northmanlogging]

If'n yew do pigs about 4-5 months into it they start lookin at you like maybe you taste good, then they kinda track your movements around the yard, by the time comes to call the butcher they remind you of jeffrey dalmer and yer more than happy to see them go...

Oregone is a long way to go for a cheese burger floyd... but i have done worse, kanadia for a gyro, idaho for some fries... etc

problem with the moo cows is space for us we'd like to have a couple cows and maybe some sheep (for the wife ) but we got to pay this house down a little bit and then find some acreage... so for now its make every inch of dirt count