219 trees were chipped at this location on Saturday, 564 on Sunday. The two-day total was 783. Not bad for the first time at this location.

I left Saturday about 12:45pm, so I didn’t get to see how the rest of the day went. When I arrived Sunday morning, there was already a full corral of trees waiting to be chipped. I don’t know how many of them were left over from Saturday. It’s likely that many of them were dropped off overnight.


There was a much bigger turnout of volunteers today than yesterday. It took a while for everyone to get signed in this morning.

It’s a good thing we had all the volunteers on hand. There were several large truckloads delivered during the day.

As expected, many more people brought their trees today rather than yesterday. There was a pretty regular stream of arrivals. Most of the folks brought their trees by car, but they also walked, as this couple did, wheeled their trees in laundry and shopping baskets, and even biked them in.

The chipper didn’t operate constantly all day. We’d build up a large batch of trees, then the Parks staff would crank up the chipper and polish off the pile quickly. When the timing was right, and the chipper was active, folks dropping off their tree got to watch their very own tree getting chipped.

In the interest of photos of garden bloggers, here’s an action shot of me bringing a tree from curbside to a Parks pickup truck. It’s not in my garden, but it’s somewhat gardening-related. Several of the Parks staff and some of the volunteers addressed me as “Santa”.

Guardian of the Tools

Related Posts

My Mulchfest posts
Park Circle Mulchest 2008 [Flickr set]

Links

Mulchfest 2008, Parks

Update 2008.01.06: I’ve added a post with photos from today.

Trees check in, they don’t check out.

Today I volunteered for the city-wide Mulchfest at the Park Circle location. I had a great time, and I’m going back tomorrow.

The 3rd Street entrance to Prospect Park has been the focus of past years, and it was this year as well. By 11am, we heard that they had already handled over 300 trees. All the media were there, as well as the Parks Commissioner.

This is the first year that chipping is being done on-site at Park Circle. It was slow to start at 10am, but the pace picked up during the morning, and by the time I left around 12:30pm, I estimate at least 200 trees had been chipped and shredded, with more arriving every few minutes. Parks trucks went out with staff and volunteers to cruise the streets in the area for trees left for curbside pickup. They brought those back to park Circle for chipping. That was the source for most of the trees, though we had several drop-offs as well.

Because today was Three Kings Day, many people in the area of Park Circle had not yet taken down their trees. Tomorrow should be even busier.

The chipper empties into the back of a specialized dump-van/track. A couple of times during the day, the truck backs up and dumps out a huge pile of mulched Christmas trees.

The mulch is available for residents to come by and pick up. I got four big bags of it to use in my backyard. Parks staff and volunteers also moved the mulch to mulch trees around Park Circle. We’ll be doing more of that tomorrow, as well.

Two of the volunteers at Park Circle were from the radio station Hot97. They sent a small crew over from 3rd Street to Park Circle. I think they interviewed everyone there, including me. So sometime in the next week there will be a very brief (about 10 seconds) video of me on their Web site.

Thank You Very Mulch!

Related Posts

My Mulchfest posts
Park Circle Mulchest 2008 [Flickr set]

Links

Mulchfest 2008, Parks
HOT 97 at Mulchfest 2008