the Walnut Diary

We picked up a slightly used brand-name* wood chipper this morning in Osgoode, ON. It had appeared as an afterthought in a Kijiji ad for a Kubota B7510 tractor identical to ours. As promised, the Canadian-made Wallenstein* connected and was operating ten minutes after arrival at the farm.

My previous attempt to buy a wood chipper had resulted in an embarrassing return to the vendor of the unit. It looked identical to this one, but the flywheel was warped and I was convinced that it could never be operated successfully. So much for the imported clones priced at less than half that of the Wallenstein products.

After two hours and 17 minutes of relaxed chipping, my Fitbit registers 7,590 steps for the day. My heart rate peaked at 123 bpm and I have burned 2113 calories so far today.

I still have all ten fingers.

This might well be a fitness regimen which suits me. I am forever pruning my walnut trees, and until now I have hauled the cut branches to a growing pile on the property where I compact them together with the loader on my larger tractor.
But after three weeks of pruning this year and no burning done, the pile is beginning to crowd out young trees. As well, I could use a supply of wood chips.

My friend Les suggested renting a chipper for the long weekend. I responded that I usually only work for about an hour at a time. A marathon session to the tune of a raging gasoline engine on a self-contained rental unit would wear me out. I would much rather listen to my little diesel friends, Kubota and Bolens, as I chip away on the brush at my own pace in nice weather, channeling the chips into the dump trailer for distribution around the property.

Today’s task involved cleaning up the mess after I 1) burned the dried hay away from a downed Manitoba maple; 2)cut off the many branches to get at the trunk; 3) cut the trunk up into spring and fall firewood and removed it; 4) hauled most of the branches away on my dump trailer behind the Kubota.

Of course I had watched many videos of tractor-mounted wood chippers in operation. The most interesting title I saw was: “Another way to break your fingers.” When I started on the dry Manitoba maple branches, I quickly saw the point, though avoided injury from the twigs snapping back and forth as the branches enter the chopper.

For the kind of work it was doing today, the 21 hp Kubota seems well matched to the chipper. I have yet to notice the engine dying back in material up to 3″ in diameter. In fact, the larger green ash branches are easier to feed through the machine than the smaller, dried box elder ones. The Wallenstein’s* 425 pounds feels substantial behind the light tractor. I’ll leave on the three suitcase weights left over from bush hog operation in summer to balance the weight.

By the end of the day my Fitbit read 10,224 steps. That’s the most ever for me.

*The downside is that my new chipper is almost certainly not a Wallenstein product. There are lots of look-alike labels, but no “Wallenstein” brand label no “Made in Canada” label, and most important of all, no serial number. The problem is that I may not be able to order parts from Wallenstein without that identifier, and I need the bushing which separates the two halves of the chute. So I have paid almost full price for a used counterfeit. The bearings had not been torqued, and three of the blades had a bolt loose, with one twisted off. On the other hand it seems to have an authentic Italian PTO shaft.

UPDATE: I ordered the bushing from the local Wallenstein dealer using the part number in the brand-name model’s online manual. For twenty dollars I received in two days a pair of sturdy steel “c’s” which combine to provide a wear surface around the moving part on the chute of the chipper. My counterfeit model had the same parts made of black plexiglass. The colour was right, but durability was a definite issue.