MULCH MOUNTAIN

You know that feeling when you sign up for a free chip service and then suddenly there's a larger-than-an-SUV pile of wood chips in your backyard? (I do.)

Turns out there's this pretty cool website called Chip Drop that connects laypeople (like myself) and local arborists. Once you sign up, you're put on a list as someone who wants a chip drop and then once there's an arborist nearby who needs a place to dump, you get a notification and TA-DA! Chips appear within 48 hours of the notification.

The website did say "be prepared to take a minivan-sized load of chips" because apparently a lot of people are shocked at the size of the drop, and I can see why... I mean, look at this thing! It's MUCH larger than my Subaru Forester, which is close in size to a minivan. Luckily we have quite a bit of space to cover with this lovely, fresh mulch!

My favorite thing about this (besides the whole FREE MULCH part) is that these chips came mostly from pine trees, which means that our entire backyard smells like Christmas trees!!! Seriously, better than any Yankee Candle.

This gigantic addition to the already-quite-small (you could even say, "Tiny") farm will shrink over time as it both composts itself and is spread throughout the yard to improve our soil quality.

Being in a very urban area means that our backyard soil is quite compact and sandy and lacking in organic matter. Covering the soil with pine needles and woodchips will help it retain moisture, attracting bugs and microbes. As the organic material on top decomposes it will integrate into the soil -- at least, that's the hope.

 The first thing we mulched was the giant pit we accidentally dug next to the chicken coop before discovering that post hole that literally turned our whole coop building plans around (by 180 degrees, to be exact). Hopefully this will be some very healthy soil by next year since underneath the mulch is the pre-rotted straw from our straw bale garden this summer. The chickens will certainly love all the bugs and worms it attracts!

Another plus from this endeavor was that it sort of forced Brandon and me to finally put together that raised bed we had been putting off for months. We had already assembled the walls (made of pressure treated wood and corrugated steel panels), it was just a matter of putting the walls together and settling on a place for the bed. We decided to put it between the chicken coop and mandarin tree/bush/dwarf thing.

Check out all that beautiful fresh pine wood coating the ground!
That's all premium mulch!

And lastly, the girls seem to think we bought them a jungle gym and are absolutely loving the mulch pile. As it stands now, if they get to the top of it they can see over the fence to the neighbor's property, which I'm sure makes them feel very tall and important. The more they play in the mulch pile, the more it spreads out, which makes my job a little harder in shoveling it to mulch the whole yard. For now, I'm okay with it because they are just so darn funny.