Chipper/shredders are
cool. I call them "bio-mass generators." They explode tree parts so fast, you almost spend more time raking away the chute area than loading in waste. At least with the tractor, you could move ahead 2 feet and start over.
Out here, a lot of the trees have nasty 2" thorns. No match for the shredder. Mine is a 8hp TroyBilt and it will munch a 3" trunk about as fast as you can cram it in the "pencil sharpener." Wish I could adapt the thing to my 3pt...
It used to be a ritual when my daughter was at home. We'd take the Christmas tree down and then take it out on the driveway and saw off the limbs. Then, my daughter would cram the trunk in the chipper and we'd put the chips in a wicker bowl with a lid and the house would smell like Christmas for another week. One day, as the machines 80lb flywheel was winding down, my daughter mentioned the machine was "awesome."
At the time, she was thinking about being a pilot and I told her, "Every airline pilot has to have one of these. If you become one, you can have mine when I retire." Giving me that look kids develop after they sense their dad is trying to pull something over on her, she went inside and told her mom, "Dad said every airline pilot needs a chipper/shredder..."
Her mom (who has a wicked sense of humor) without skipping a beat said, "Yep, they come in handy for grinding up your wife. But of course, you have to freeze her first and then saw her up in little pieces." My daughter stood there drop-jawed.
Then we told her the story about a pilot who decided it was cheaper to grind his wife up than divorce her. He cut her up in little pieces and then froze her. Then, on a early December day, he chipped up her remains and threw the grindings into a lake on his property. Only problem, he was a typical cheap airline pilot and
rented his chipper. Doing service a few weeks later, the rental technician found bone chips and other "organic material" in the machine. All the bone fragments in the guy's lake tied him to the murder and he is sitting in prison somewhere.
Sometimes its fun to pull your kids leg...
