What do you do with your waste?

I don't know if anyone can relate but the amount of grass, branches and other stuff I get whenever I mow (I own and maintain 10 acres of land) is ridiculous. While I find a certain amount of waste useful for fertilizing, I certainly do not need all of it. I've been looking at waste compactors which are usually for industrial use but they press everything together so that the waste takes up as little space as possible.

It's quite an investment though so I decided to ask fellow lawn owners. What do you do with your waste? Do you compost it or just leave it around for fertilization?

The very best thing you can do for your lawn is to mulch the grass .
However that might mean mowing a bit more often and with 10 acres this might become a time management problem, particularly if doing it properly you need to cut at around 3" and drive bit slower.
You can get a compost tumbler.
The solar powered ones are great ( so they tell me ) I used one for 20 years.
It will take a little time to get the wet /dry ratios correct but once you get it down pat, nice compost to go around all your shrubs .
Too dry & you can add water, if it gets too wet & balls. tip it out & bury it.
Toss a little dolomite and blood & bone into it and you can forget about buying lawn food forever.
Any manure, fresher the better will make it better again but don't worry too much about the composition just the water content.
I now use 15 x 13 gal bins which I toss daily with a modified hay fork and get garden ready compost in 10 days summer and 21 days winter.
The bins are lined up with an empty one each end.
Toss them all to one side in the morning and the other way in the arvo.
Each day the volume will drop so if I start with 13 bins I will end up with 4.
So I can have 4 or 5 different "brews" all composting at the same time.
When finished they get tossed into a bay till I am ready to use them and you can see it moving with all the earthworms in there. Free lawn airation.

Large sticks are burned in a nice fire. They could also be used in a chiminea for nice fire. The rest of it gets eaten by the lawn mower and disappears in the grass or where ever it goes. I see a few folks around that pick all the stuff up and send it to the trash dump which is crazy in my opinion. I've never sent yard waste of any type to the dump in my life. I have gone to other homes to obtain bags of leaves or pine straw for use in my own yard. Composting is probably your best route.

I suspect in Utah plant matter breaks down very slowly due to the climate. I didn't even know they had trees in Utah. Thought it was all rock. :laughing:

I am very lucky seeing I own some wood land. I just pile it up in the back part of this wood land where it can't be seen and find in some years time it just goes back into the ground. I also find the wildlife use these brush piles to make homes into. Any wood that is large enough I use in my wood burning heaters to heat my house and shop in the winter months. Garbage and trash goes to the land fill or recycle bin. I also take all my old metal and used parts to the salvage yard once a year in which I get paid for. I collect soda and beer cans in which I find good money in selling back to the redemption center.

In my yard I pick up the sticks rest just gets left to rot. When I do a job that requires removal its all shreaded before its brought home. I have a natural old dry pond I've been dumping crap in for 10 years now. Some day hope it gets full and that will be my new garden. Once in awhile I'll go out there with my frontend loader and get a few yards of mulch out of it and put on my garden then till it in good.Large enough limbs I can't shread that's hard wood. Will get cut up for fire wood BBQ wood or my fire pit on my patio.

I mow 8 acres of lawn.
Branches that are to big to mow go on the burn pile, everything else simply gets mowed.