How to get rid of mulch after forestry service?

Hey guys, first time poster here.

Bought 11 acres of raw land (no electricity, water, etc) about a year and a half ago, and the first thing I had to do was have a forestry service come in and clear about 2 acres of it up front for a house, barn, yard, etc.  I had them leave the nice big trees, but I have about a foot or more of mulch all over that 2 acres, and it's not decomposing very fast (if at all).  I initially used my tractor and grapple to pile up a big chunk of it, but that pile isn't decomposing either (not that I thought it would, just doing it).  Where I've cleared the mulch, I have great grass coming in on its own.

The question is, how can I quickly-ish get rid of this?  I've heard everything from lime to nitrogen to mushrooms to clovers.  Any thoughts on the best way?  Cost to do?  How much per sqft/acre?

Any help would be appreciated, and if this is not the right forum, please move.  I could not find a forum that really matched what I was asking...

Where are you located? I never have enough mulch and could use it at my place. Have to think others would also happily take it off your hands.

Any chance you know what kind of trees were mulched?

Craigslist and FB marketplace will probably be your best bet if you're trying to get it off your land ASAP. Or if there's a local hardware store or garden supply place, ask them if they have a community sign board where you can put up a "Free Mulch" sign. Or put a sign out by the road.

If you want to turn it into a value added product and make a bit of money, you could inoculate it with stropharia mushrooms, or put a bunch of chickens on it over the winter and turn it into compost.

If you want it to break down to feed back to the land on site, spread it out on the ground to maximize wood/soil contact or make some hugel beds.

If you want to not do anything further with it, go take a stroll around the nearby woods and find some old rotten logs, then take home a bucket or two of rotten log pulp to inoculate the pile... set it and forget it. Then in a few years when you're putting in a new garden bed or whatever, you'll be glad you still have it piled up.

Hi Kyle,

Welcome to permies!

If it was mine, I'd just pile it up and leave it there. Then use it at mulch between planting beds, or trees or other places where it would be needed.

Hello Kyle and welcome to Permies! I'm sure it must be annoying for you, but some of us are quite jealous of your problem!
I suspect the main problem with it decomposing quickly is the size of the pieces of wood that are left - they look like small branches rather than chip. I agree with the add Nitrogen (chickens/urine/manure) this will turn the whole lot into compost in time. Mushrooms will do the same thing in time....To tidy it quicker, you will either need to give it away - a nice way to meet permie minded people in the area perhaps - or put it somewhere out of sight.
It would be a pity to lose that organic material so my suggestion would be to bury it. Depending on your climate it will act as a moisture reservoir underground, and a relatively short lived hugelbed. You could put it under raised beds, or dig trenches and pile the earth back on top. In time the whole lot will sink, so maybe raised beds would be best. An alternative is to hide it in plain sight and use it as path material.
Good luck and please let us know how you get on.

My suggestions echo Nancy's: build a big hugel bed from it. The woodchip will break down relatively quickly, especially if you can add a lot of nitrogen to it, and build lovely soil. The downside is that it will rob the soil of any nitrogen in the short term so you might struggle to grow in it immediately.

Other suggestions are to deep-mulch paths between raised beds or mounds for vegetable growing. Our vegetable area has woodchip paths, sat on top of cardboard to suppress the grass and then piled up 3-8" deep (depending on how much woodchip we have!). We always need more to top up the paths as our climate is quite wet and they break down easily. The upside of the paths is that they suppress weeds, act as a moisture reservoir (we have never had to irrigate our beds) and keep down the mud. They also grow us mushrooms as we innoculated with wine caps.

Hi Kyle, welcome to Permies!

As you have already seen, many of us on this forum look at wood chips as a resource and not something for simple disposal.

Several years ago I had a similarly large pile of wood chips left over from cleaning up and trimming back an old fence line.  I did not know how to get rid of these chips, came here and was encouraged to use a very specific species of mushrooms to decompose these chips into mushroom compost.  I did, and it absolutely changed the way I garden now—the mulch was the most fertile garden bedding I have ever seen.  By now I deliberately look for wood to chip up so I can use it as a substrate for growing mushrooms, tomatoes, and making awesome garden bedding all in one step.  If you like, I can help you with this process.

My process is detailed HERE:

https://permies.com/t/82798/composting/composting-wood-chips-chicken-litter

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Eric

One thing I do not recommend.

Do not light it on fire.

I was part of a volunteer fire department and we had a local farmer that cleared a hillside and had a similar pile left over. He wanted to burn it to dispose of it and asked us to standby just in case.

There was so much heat coming off the pile that 50 feet away it was melting our safety cones that we put out. The fire ended up going into the ground and stayed smoldering for over a week. It was nutty. We had to spray some exposures to keep it from running but luckily we kept it under control and gained some terrifying training as well.

I believe there was a lot of black locust in the pile mixed in which did not help. That stuff burns HOT.

All I can say is: lucky you!

Welcome to the forum.

I like what all the replies have suggested.

I will suggest adding some mushroom spores and growing mushrooms.

Make some hugelkultur garden beds.

Timothy Norton wrote:One thing I do not recommend. Do not light it on fire. There was so much heat coming off the pile that 50 feet away it was melting our safety cones that we put out. The fire ended up going into the ground and stayed smoldering for over a week. It was nutty. HOT.

My suggestion was going to be burn it, so I'm curious as to what the conditions were like when that pile was lit? My favorite time to burn big piles is when there's about 6 inches of snow on the ground with no wind.

Hey guys, thanks for all the replies.  But since there are so many, I'll just reply here in one go:

1:  Someone said it looks like branches and not mulch.  99% of it is mulch done with a mulching head on a LARGE dedicated mulcher.  So the chips are roughly 2-6 inches each.  There are only a "few" branches and such, comparatively speaking...it's just that they stick out like a sore thumb when compared to the rest.  And that pile in the picture is only a fraction of what's left.  My front yard is 6-12 inches deep in the stuff.  If you look around at the surrounding tree line, that's how thick it WAS before clearing...unwalkable.  Also, BTW, that pile in the picture is 50 ft wide and 15ft tall...and that's only 1/4 the yard I've done so far...it's quite the work to do...

2:  Someone said just pile it up.  That's what I've been doing for months, but it's super hard to do, given that there are still some stumps barely above grade that catch on the buckets and grapples.  And at this point, I've only done about 25% of the yard and was just looking for some other way to go about it.

3:  Someone said find someone to buy it.  I found a couple places that said they would, then came out and looked at it, and said it wasn't worth their time....they wanted ACRES of the stuff.  Granted, they are more industrial, but having to find multiple people on facebook or other places seems tedious.  I would only assume a single person would not want it all, so I'd be dealing with several small loads across several small people for months...and I don't live here yet (no house built yet).  Also, I don't yet have it all piled up to efficiently gather and load it.  However, I may go ahead and give this a shot just to see if there are any takers...

4:  Someone said use it for gardening or food plots.  I'm just trying to get the front cleared out for a house and front yard for right now.  I thought about just migrating it all to the back and letting it turn to compost...maybe treating it with something like mushrooms, but I don't have a dump trailer or anything to efficiently haul it with, and going one bucket load at a time would take a year, lol.  And to be honest, there's no way I would dedicate myself to do that.

5:  Someone asked what type of trees.  It's a mixture of mesquite, cedar, elm, and just garbage underbrush like thorn bushes, etc.

6:  Someone said don't burn it.  I had actually considered burning it, but in small chunks/piles.  Obviously, I would NEVER light the whole thing up in one go...hell, I don't even have water out here yet, lol.  I thought about just dumping a bucket load in a cleared, dirt-only section, and burning one pile at a time, with the tractor and box blade on stand by should I need it.  Thoughts on that?

Long short, while I appreciate everyone's feedback, and definitely agree that at some point down the road I would like to have it all for a future food plot or similar, right now, with this particular stash, I just want to get rid of it the quickest, easiest way possible.  It's a LOT of work to pile up the rest, and I don't have a good place to store it, and I'm just trying to get the house plot and front yard cleared for now.