I give you: free mulch:
Granted, the cost of a thing is not merely calculated in dollars and cents. But, as far as dollars and cents go, apart from the gasoline -- which is admittedly expensive these days -- this mulch was free.
Surely the rhetorical hook has been set and you are wondering, "how did our clever hobby-farming friends get such a gorgeous pile of free mulch?"
As with most things that are 'free' in this world, you have to 'know someone'. For us, generally speaking, that someone is Grandpa Don. Stephanie's maternal grandfather, Grandpa Don has been featured in several Magdalen Farm blog posts in the past. He is a character and a half: an 80 year old that can chain saw and split heavy maple tree trunks and do snow mobile tricks all day, provided he has access to enough of Grandma Arlene's cookies and homemade jams. Grandpa Don is also a 'collector'. He has buildings full of everything you could ever want or need. In this case, he has a mulcher.
Let's backtrack for a moment: As Stephanie and I discussed ways to improve our farm over the long, snowy winter -- er, fairly short and rather mild winter -- I stated that putting mulch between our raised beds and in a few other areas would really spruce up the joint. But thinking back to my days of lawn mowing and landscaping with Gaffer's Lawn Care I remembered that one actually needs a great deal of mulch to cover any sizable section of ground and that one seldom gets a great deal on such a great deal of mulch. Amidst these bleak midwinter ponderings I recalled aloud, "doesn't Grandpa Don have a mulcher?"
"I think he might...," added Stephanie, (known to Grandpa Don as Stephers). "Does he? It's so hard to keep track of such things."
Well, in fact, Grandpa Don does have a mulcher and about a week ago he dropped it off for us.
"That's all good and well," you're probably chuckling to yourself, "but a mulcher doesn't get you mulch without some branches to feed it."
But piles of old branches, my friend, is something of which we have nary a shortage.
Since we moved in we've done a great deal of tree trimming and have also cut down a number of scrub trees that had grown up close to buildings and had begun to wreak havoc on the foundations. These piles had made for some charming, decorative landscape ornamentation... I can't even type that with a straight face. These piles needed to be gotten rid of and we were planning on burning them all this spring, but instead we've been mulching them. So far we have made somewhere around four cubic yards of mulch.
With that bounty of free mulch on hand (and plenty more yet to be had), we've had to decide how best to employ the woody fruits of our labor. The Mulch-Use Priority Rankings (MUPR) currently stand as follows:
- Vegetable Garden Paths
- Flower Beds Around the House
- Main Flower Garden Paths and Beds
- Raspberry Beds Along the Pine Stand
The great thing about our free mulch is that the actual creating of the mulch has been a lot of fun, too. It is a wondrous process to take something that was an eyesore, run it through a loud, vibrating contraption and have it shoot out into a lovely pile of garden-beautifying goodness!
I figure in the end we'll probably create around nine yards of mulch this spring. So for those 729 cubic foot of eye-pleasing, weed-blocking goodness we extend another hearty 'thank you' to our kindly benefactors: Grandpa Don and Grandma Arlene!
