I have to tell someone who understands....

[Jared77]

Your poor trailer looks so insignificant compared the piles and that 10 wheel dump truck.

 

[digitS']

From a distance . . . it looks like pretty good stuff coming out of that dump truck. I mean, you can't see the grain in the wood .

Hey MontyJ, I was out walking thru the forest near where I used to live. Suddenly, I realized that I was standing in sawdust! There were a fair amount of bushes growing up out of it but, sure enuf, a half mile or more from the nearest residence and several 100 yards back in the trees, I was on top of about a foot of wood sawdust!

I looked around trying to figure out how far this stuff went and wondering how it got there. Then I saw what was left of a building. Only a little of the roof was sticking out of the bushes. The rest of the building was flat against the ground. As best as I could tell, the building had taken several decades to fall down. Almost for sure, it been a little sawmill and hadn't been used in 30 or 40 years. That would mean the sawdust had laid there on the ground for the same length of time!

Steve

 

[897tgigvib]

Hey Digit, sounds like you found the mother lode of sawdust. If I were you I'd haul it out, maybe give it some kind of test to see if it's good stuff, and add it to your compost heaps for awhile. Gotta figure its ph one way or another, gadget or test growing like I do. If Huechera Coral Bells grow well in it, it's good stuff. Then again, it might be weak in nutrients, so adding things like bone or blood meal might be called for. Wow! Sawdust from an ancient mill! How lucky can you get?

At the Greenhouse in Montana, we used to load the long trailer with fresh sawdust from a local mill. The owner there used a front end loader as I shovelled it high in the trailer. It was used between rows of trees and shrubs, especially in the always new sections we were having to make because the place expanded when I was there. The old stuff, only a few years old, would sprout seeds of perennials like Lilacs, spirea, Currants, oh shoot, dozens of things like that, and I'd be transplanting those seedlings as the seasons wound down. Soft, light brown, fluffy, good stuff! Even smells good.

 

[MontyJ]

Your poor trailer looks so insignificant compared the piles and that 10 wheel dump truck.

Yeah it was. The trailer is a 10 cu. ft. garden trailer. When I filled it the very first time and didn't even make a dent in the piles, I knew it was going to be a long evolution. I probably filled it 250-300 times before it was done. I swore then that I would never do that again.

 

[digitS']

Hey Digit, sounds like you found the mother lode of sawdust. If I were you I'd haul it out . . .

Marshall, it was in the 1970's.

But, you are right. It might still be there.

Steve

 

[ducks4you]

I am excited for you, even though for ME this is old hat. Just leave the pile and work on it after the spring thaw.
I even thank my horses when I'm cleaning their stall and they dump a new pile on the freshly cleaned spot. Surprisingly, if you keep a horse's stall cleaned up and dry, he/she will try very hard to keep most of it clean. They pick their pee and poo spots. My 14yo mare even tries to poo outside of her stall.
I spend too much time on winter animal mucking out to worry about turning any of my piles. This year, I'm filling in an area behind the barn that has been sunken since I bought the place in 1999. It's been too hard to mow it bc it's uneven. My piles should degrade and level it out by mid-summer, if I don't steal some for my garden beds.