The sound of heavy machinery chipping woods! Somewhere in the neighborhood! Nearby! We followed the sound to 5th Street, about a block and a half away. The noise was of course, deafening, but one of the workers saw me and motioned to another worker who came over and we went behind the truck to deafen the sound. Turns out this upright, friendly, and very professional young man is the owner of Bluestone Tree: “A professional and polite tree company.”

I told him we could sure use his chips! He asked me where I lived. I told him, and where to put them. Very exciting.

Thus we follow two permaculture principles: 1) observe what’s going on, in this case, in the neighborhood, with my ears, and 2) catch, hold, and utilize all flows! — here, the flow of wood chips in Green Acres suburban neighborhood that is about 60 years old with all sorts of fast-growing soft wood trees nearing their end.

About an hour later, he arrived in the truck completely full of chips. I asked him to place one pile after another between the street and the fence. Which he did, carefully backing up to dump and sidling sideways pile after pile.

Rebecca then asked him to place the final pile in another spot; he was happy to do that too.

She was very excited about these particular chips, because they are the kind that are easy to walk on barefoot. Also, as I responded, we get not only lots of carbon from the wood (from an old splitting Sycamore tree), but nitrogen from the leaves on the branches mixed in.

We plan to spread the chips on our myriad garden paths.

Best of all, afterwards, Jared leaned down from his high perch to tell me about a website that connects local tree companies with those who want chips. Wow!

chipdrop.in

Takeaway? Local problems go hand in hand with local solutions. In the process we create new relationships. Everybody benefits.