I have a massive brush pile, what are my options?

I just closed on my property but they left a ton of trees in a pile that they had removed to install the gravel road.  I'd guess it's about 15x20 foot.  Its a complete wreck in there and not sure how I'd even attempt to downsize the pile.  Obviously burning it would be free but I can't even imagine trying to contain something like that.  Has anyone burned a pile that high?  Are there mulch companies that will come take the trees for free and mulch them?  Are there any other options to have someone remove it at low or no cost?  I'm open to all cheap suggestions.

What sort of trees do you have? Is it worth your time to chip away at the pile with a chainsaw, salvaging firewood while doing small, controlled burns with the slash? Biochar is useful stuff when starting a homestead.

I would be very cautious about burning the whole pile at one time without knowing the subsoil and risk factors. Even if you contain it during the initial burn, the danger of a large fire is creating a ground fire in roots or local peat. This can smoulder and create problems for years and years.

One idea: if the local fire department needs a training exercise, you may be able to draw on a professional team with equipment to keep things contained.

My 2c.

Thank you, I really appreciate the input. I know there's at least two cedar trees in there, not sure on the rest.  I'll try to get a pic tomorrow when I go out.  I really don't need the wood. I have several other downed trees I plan to keep and possibly mill.  I also have an immense amount of wood shards from them hacking everything up under the trees in the front and I still need to clean all of that too. I have firewood for ages.  I had wondered if there was anyway I could get a fire department out there.  And I had no idea about roots catching fire, don't want to do that!

1. How does its location fit in with your long-term plans? Could you rent an earth mover and turn it into a giant hugel culture or multiple smaller ones? Cedar's not the best to have in there, but so long as that's not the biggest part of it, add dirt and seeds, even just in pockets along with mushroom spores and Mother Nature will deal with it.

2. If there's a safe place to dig a long biochar trench, I agree with Douglas about making biochar. It's a great way to sequester all that carbon, even if you're not in an eco-system that desperately needs biochar for other reasons. For example, here on the wet coast on my clay soil, biochar both holds nutrients over wet winters, it also lightens our heavy soil. My understanding of the soil and weather patterns at Wheaton Labs is that it's not considered particularly useful there.

3. Can parts of it be used for brush fencing or water redirecting?

If you don't have to rush into dealing with it, I'd let it be, focus on immediate issues, and let your creativity run wild until you come up with something that fits the permaculture principle - "The problem is the solution"!

I was left with many such piles. I burn in areas where it's appropriate and chip in others. I probably have about 100 such piles on my property and they are highly flammable shrubs, the trees are more easily dealt with. I was very worried about them when I first moved here, but I can only do what I can do. Every year I do more, that's all I can do.

Congratulations on the new property.

You have gotten some great suggestions.

Brush piles make lovely habitats for wildlife.  I have many of them as I get a reduction on my taxes just for having them.

The previous owner was making a brush pile fence along the property line.

I really don't need them or like them other than the tax break though after nearly ten years they are not going anywhere.

Anne mentioned this.  Brush piles house many, many creatures, so if you really have to get rid of the pile, it would be great if you could remove parts at a time.  If you burn the pile, chances are very high that you are going to burn animals up in it when you do.

My choices, in order of preference would be to a) leave it alone, or b) make biochar or wood chips from it.  B) is obviously more time and labor intensive, but with a yield that would make it worthwhile to me.

I’m no expert, but I sure do like to experiment, if I had a giant brush pile and no other good uses for it…

I might try and plant an insane amount of very large vining plants all around the perimeter and let them climb all over it in wild fashion.

Maybe I’d get a harvest of some sort of squash or something, who knows.

Seems like a fun side project.

Mike Bettis wrote:I just closed on my property but they left a ton of trees in a pile that they had removed to install the gravel road.  I'd guess it's about 15x20 foot.  Its a complete wreck in there and not sure how I'd even attempt to downsize the pile.  Obviously burning it would be free but I can't even imagine trying to contain something like that.  Has anyone burned a pile that high?  Are there mulch companies that will come take the trees for free and mulch them?  Are there any other options to have someone remove it at low or no cost?  I'm open to all cheap suggestions.

Yes, there are companies that will mulch the trees.   They usually can be found by searching for something like 'fire protection' or 'forest clearing' - something like that.

Does your county/state have a fire prevention or fire mitigation program?   We bought a property with many such piles along our gravel driveway.  The piles are one fairly steep slope, and they've been there so long that other 'junk' trees have grown up (and died) all around them.   We had no idea what to do, and it really worried us, since many of them were close to the highway, where a tossed cigarette could start a wildfire.   We finally found out that the county has a fire mitigation program for free.   They will come out and remove the dead trees, thin the trees to remove 'ladder fuel', and either chip them or use a masticator that just smushes(new technical term) them up.  In area that are too steep for the machinery, they will do it by hand, leaving small, manageable burn piles, which must be burned within 3 years.  They also have a contact with someone that will take care of the burn piles for a reasonable fee.   We wish we had known about them sooner.

We have a couple of other piles that have non-burnable stuff in them (old barbed wire, pieces of metal roofing, pieces of poly-pipe, etc).   We'll ask the burn pile guy if those piles can be burnt, leaving just the stuff that needs to be taken to the dump.

For a pile that is 15'x20', in an area that is 'a wreck', I would personally advise against trying to reduce that pile by chipping or chainsawing it..... unless you're very energetic.  That would be an incredible amount of work.

Really, I could not have said it better than Trace described those brush piles.

I was thinking that the brush pile could be turned into smaller stacks and there is a PEP BB (Badge Bit) for that:

https://permies.com/wiki/108150/pep-animal-care/Brush-Pile-PEP-BB-animal

Not knowing anything about your new land, there might be a need for check dams and brush dams:

https://permies.com/t/51421/Creek-repair-brush-dams

Some of that wood might be big enough to use to build a root cellar.  we have a whole forum all about those:

https://permies.com/f/451/root-cellars

Wow! I absolutely love all of the responses. Thank you all for so many great tips and ideas. Honestly if it wasn't right at the front where my drive will be I'd attempt one of the many great suggestions for leaving it. I honestly think I like the vibe idea the most. But since it's in an awful spot it needs to be dealt with soon. I also want to plant a new tree line ASAP across the front for privacy and erosion and that pile is in the way of that too.

Today I attempted to work on it but the learning curve is steep. Haha. I pulled the first small oak out with no issues. I'll cut it up for firewood. Then my overconfidence got the best of me and I tried to pull a huge cedar out on top. It didn't budge. I cut the root ball off and drug that away. Then tried to drag the tree. It wouldn't budge. I cut a few limbs I could access. Still no luck. At this point the truck was stuck in the mud and I was headed downhill so there was no slack to undo the tow robe and chain. Luckily I could lift the tree with the tractor front loader and it eventually loosened some slack to free the truck. Haha. What a day. I left it at that. The large cedar I'm going to mill. I think if I can attempt again on a day with drier first and more patience I can sort through it enough and burn the rest. But I'm still open to other ideas as long as it doesn't include leaving it.

Here's a picture of it. It may be hard to tell the size from the picture.

It sounds like a great source for firewood, hugelkultur wood, and all sorts of future projects.  It sounds mighty handy!

Has anyone burned a pile that high?

Yes, many times. It's part of what I do. BUT it requires a great deal of caution & a good supply of water helps too. It still has many leaves so it doesn't look dry enough to burn good anyway. I would do exactly as you're doing & chop it up to use it for the other valuable things already suggested.

Click here for fire pix & info

Mike Bettis wrote:

Today I attempted to work on it but the learning curve is steep. Haha. I pulled the first small oak out with no issues. I'll cut it up for firewood. Then my overconfidence got the best of me and I tried to pull a huge cedar out on top. It didn't budge. I cut the root ball off and drug that away. Then tried to drag the tree. It wouldn't budge. I cut a few limbs I could access. Still no luck. At this point the truck was stuck in the mud and I was headed downhill so there was no slack to undo the tow robe and chain. Luckily I could lift the tree with the tractor front loader and it eventually loosened some slack to free the truck. Haha. What a day. I left it at that. The large cedar I'm going to mill. I think if I can attempt again on a day with drier first and more patience I can sort through it enough and burn the rest. But I'm still open to other ideas as long as it doesn't include leaving it.

OMG!  It sounds so much like a couple of 'adventures' we've had - including getting the truck stuck in the mud.   We actually got a tractor stuck in the mud on time, trying to get our truck out!

P.S.  The first burn pile we ever did was about that tall, and not quite as large of a footprint (I think ours was about 15' diameter).  We burned it in a dirt clearing, about 40' from our brand new log home.  We had two hoses.   We were not even remotely prepared for the height of the flames.   It was incredibly scary.  We wished we had never started. The flames eventually died down and it was a pile of 'ashes'.  However, as nighttime fell, we realized it was one giant glowing circle of embers.  We watered it and watered it, but the embers glowed for several days.  We were terrified that the wind would pick up during the night and send the embers flying.

I would leave it for the season for critters, maybe plant vine crops around it as has been suggested. As brush piles age you can drive over them with a tractor or get a bunch of kids to jump on them, breaking up the smaller branches. As the pile breaks down it can be used as ramial mulch in an orchard.  Great resource to have on hand. I would never burn brush in an open pile - just a waste.

Hi,  I've had to deal with brush situations and burning was forbidden.  I used both a tractor and pickup. Make or buy a grapple and attach it to smaller brush first and pull it out and away to access the larger trees. cut two or three limbs off the trees and drag em out. Then cut the tree into fireplace size pieces. Do again, a couple more limbs, another chunk of the tree. Every once in a while give the tree a yank and see if it will move. Each time I approached the pile I looked for safety concerns.   Remember, you eat an elephant one bite at a time.

I've burned piles roughly that size and with similar composition (mostly branches up to 10 cm diameter). I also burned a much larger slash pile back in November that was mostly logs, some 5 m long and 50-60 cm diameter. The brush piles required around 1000 l of water each to douse them. The big pile of logs took at least five times that much.

All of these were top lit to get the cleanest burns possible and try to get a decent yield of biochar. We wound up getting about ten percent by volume. The big pile was immense when it hit full ignition, and then as it collapsed one of the longest logs became a trebuchet and launched flaming debris all over a hillside. We spent the next hour chasing spot fires and hitting them with shovels and wet gunnysacks. The quench process turned laborious when my pump quit and the only way to deliver water was to lift an IBC tote up on the forks of the tractor and gravity feed water through a washdown hose...which put me right up by the action. I've never stood next to a lava flow but I think this was a pretty good simulation.

I started up the pump the next day to see what was wrong with it, and it ran for over an hour without a hiccup. Machines, eh.

Always have more water on hand than you think you'll need and a way to move it quickly. Also have a plan B, and maybe a C. If I do any more big slash piles I want a pump truck. Might see if one of the local volunteer fire brigades wants to do it with me!

When I first bought my property, I cleared a few acres and ended up with piles bigger than that, including lots of cedar.  I went out one night when a good wind was blowing and about an inch of snow was on the ground and set the biggest ones on fire. It was hard to get it started with the cold and snow but once I got it going on the edge the wind did the rest. Flames and sparks lit up the sky and I just sat back and watched, no worries at all about where the sparks would land on the snow-covered ground.

It was a couple years later before I got around to building the house and in hindsight, I wish I had just let them rot. A couple other piles that I did not burn yielded a bunch of good, composted soil for the gardens. It was kind of fun doing it but burning those big ones was a waste.

If a person does want or need to burn a brush pile dry conditions are not necessary, it's the worst time to do it. A hard pouring rain won't work of course but after or even during a light rain or snow is perfect.

I've burned a few burns of piles that size and in my opinion, the key to doing it safely is timing. My favorite time to do a big burn like that is when there are at least a few inches of snow on the ground. It's a tad more difficult to get the pile going, but unless there is some other factor (e.g., crazy high winds) the fire isn't going to spread beyond the area you want.

Also, I learned from experience that if you have fruit trees nearby it is better to burn the brush piles early in the winter rather than later. The brush piles acted as hotels for hungry rabbits that went around girdling all my young trees. D'oh!

Thank you all for sharing your stories and recommendations! They were all wonderful. Reading some of the burn stories are exactly why I was hesitant to use that as my solution.  I appreciate the ideas like calling wilderness services, and making biochar, etc.  I think I have finally just wrapped my head around the huge amount of work it's going to be but I think I will try to remove all the large trees and trunks, slab any of the nice ones and use the rest for firewood, then I'll look into making biochar with the rest.  I will have a lot of cedar branches and don't know if these will be the best for biochar or if there are any other good ideas for leftover cedar limbs.

Mike Bettis wrote:I will have a lot of cedar branches and don't know if these will be the best for biochar or if there are any other good ideas for leftover cedar limbs.

Cedar works fine for biochar.  If you have bigger limbs, they make good posts after they dry.  I also chip cedar and use it for paths because it breaks down more slowly.

Here are some other ideas --

Restart a bobwhite quail covey who NEED this type of habitat and have disappeared because people remove these kinds of piles....

Second, if you have a hill area or know someone who does, use the brush to create "swales" perpendicular to the downslope to slow water run off and create a soil area for new productive trees for fruit, nuts, etc....