Mulching

This past winter, I managed to get my paws on the Medford BLM's tailgate mulcher so that we could use it in post-fire recovery up here in Northwest Oregon.  I sent a drive down last winter to pick it up.  When it arrived, it became apparent that nobody had maintained it since I used it last when I worked down there several years ago.  It had to go to the shop for repairs.  $1,500 in repairs later, it was all better, but it took months to get to that point.  And by the time we had it in working order, it was too far into the summer to use.

But I did take it out for a test run with my soil scientists who hadn't used one before.  We burned through a couple hay bales in no time flat and had a good time doing it.  We also got to investigate a potential monitoring plot in the Beachie Creek Fire which a researcher at the University of Washington is proposing to study before, during, and after we perform salvage harvest.