Bring us your green waste...

There seems to be no end to the plant and woody material that
we as residents of this verdant island are trying to "get rid of."  Be it the stumps and branches from clearing to
bring sunlight onto the front deck, or the prunings from the orchard, a whole
lot of it ends up in one burn pile or another. 
While I too relish the blush from the heat and rush of sparks shooting heavenward,
I'm compelled to seek cost-effective solutions which keep at least some of that
carbon on site, or turn it back into the soil rather than going up in smoke and
CO2.    

During my lifetime, the
concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has risen 23% from 315 to 390 parts per
million.  The scientific consensus is
that earth's climate is changing in dramatic ways due to these increased
greenhouse gasses.  I've noted with
dismay the receding glaciers in Southeast Alaska in the time I've been fishing
there.  We've all watched as dramatic
weather events overwhelm our attempts to keep oceans and rivers within their
normal boundaries.  Climate change is the most pressing problem which threatens
the prosperity of my two children. 

As a farmer, I know the best predictor of the health of soil is
its relative organic content.  My loamy
lowlands provide the majority of the feed for the cattle during August and
September when grass on the more gravely soil stops regenerating.  High humus soils maintain their moisture, do
a better job of holding nitrogen and other nutrients for slow release to the
plants, and allow roots to breath.  Successful
farming and gardening on the shallow soils we have here in the San Juans,
depends on preserving and adding to the soil's organic matter.  Building up the organic content of soil helps
reduce our atmospheric carbon in two ways, first by storing that carbon
directly in the soil, and second by making that same soil a better medium for
growing the plants that respirate the CO2 back out of the atmosphere. 

When I first owned this property I accumulated stumps and
materials from various clearing projects in a giant pile near the current
overwinter area.  Eventually Sam Pottenger
couldn't stand it anymore and brought his tub grinder over and converted the
debris to a towering and homogenous pile of wood chips.   The chips served as mulch for young trees,
and as "bedding" for the cattle during the winter months. 

A few years back I bought a "mulcher grinder" attachment for
the track loader, which allows me to grind up the smaller (under 6") material.  I've continued to place this ground up waste
in the over-winter area, and run the cattle on it over the winter when I
attempt to keep them off the fragile dormant fields.  In the spring, I've been turning the
resultant manure, chips, and hay into windrows. 
Talk to anybody who does it, making compost is gratifying.  Whether it is the billowing steam and heat as
the pile is turned, or the almost magical, alchemical transformation of the raw
material to a rich crumbly loam, I'm not sure. 

This winter I added a dedicated dumping area for green waste
out by the overwinter area.  There is a
six foot concrete ecology block wall 40 feet long.  I'll use it for my jobs, and I encourage
others to use the facility, with permission (and payment!)  Call if you have brush or clean organic
debris which you'd like to see go this way.  And yes there is a charge.  (A full size pickup is $20.)  At intervals, I'll be grinding up the
material with the track loader and the mulcher grinder.  Before winter, I'll transfer the material as
bedding into the cattle's overwinter area and the repeat the whole process.

Other solutions for "getting rid" of green waste are:

Burial: Since most of the island is made up of gravel, on a
several jobs where I've been building road, I've excavated a gravel pit on
site, and then when I was done excavating from it, backfilled it with stumps
and debris, and finally covered it all over. 
 I doubt anybody will be paying for
those carbon credits, but I understand wood debris buried in dumps essentially
ties up the carbon for hundreds of years. 

Pile the debris and let it rot:  I've also used the stumps and branches as "fences"
and visual and sound breaks.  Often there
is somewhere on the property where the brush and or green waste can be left in
a pile and is visually removed. 

Grind
it in place: With the mulcher grinder attachment on the track loader, probably
of the most cost effective solution is to grind brush and branches and trees
under 6" in diameter right in place, leaving the roots in the ground and a
carpet of the chips right there on the ground surface.