Community Corner
What's Happened To All That Brush?
While Middlefield has finished turning its storm debris into wood chips, Durham is still in the process of hiring someone to take care of it. Meanwhile, Greenbackers Farm has found good use of all of the leftovers.
On the eve of what is expected to be the first significant winter storm, here's an update on two previous major storms - Tropical Storm Irene and the Oct. 29 nor'easter.
By Friday afternoon, workers had reduced more than 8,000 cubic feet of storm debris into several large piles of wood chips on the town owned Powder Ridge property in Middlefield.
Find out what's happening in Durham-Middlefieldwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Town officials recently signed an agreement with the Durham Middlefield Interlocal Agreement Advisory Board to complete the work of "chipping the brush" from the Oct. 29 nor'easter.
Whle DMIAAB workers used a tub grinder from the Transfer Station to chip the debris, the town is ultimately responsible for disposing of the chips, a plan that remains under consideration.
Find out what's happening in Durham-Middlefieldwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
In Durham, the town is still in the process of accepting sealed bids for the work to chip brush now being stored on a site located at Haddam Quarter Road and Maiden Lane. That bidding process ends at 10 a.m. Monday.
Both towns are eligible to receive up to 75 percent reimbursement from FEMA for the cost of storm debris removal.
On an interesting side note, Greenbackers Farm in Durham has been using the leftover wood chips from the storm as cow beds.
"It's low cost (free) and goes through our manure system pretty well," farmer Melissa Greenbacker recently told Patch. "We've got a good supply and it doesn't cost us anything. It does get recycled back into the ground."
Last spring, well before there were any signs that Middlefield and Durham would face a difficult and expensive recovery from the two storms, Greenbacker was told by her veterinarian that wood chips could be used as bedding for her cows at the farm.
Perfect timing.
The farm gets a load every 7 to 10 days she says.
"We replace the bedding once a week, the baby calves get new bedding once a day," Greenbacker says. "They seem to like it. Because there's a lot of it available we can be pretty generous with it where sometimes we had to be a little more stingy with with the hay or the sawdust we've used in the past."
Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.
