Hi, I live east of Portland, and a couple of weeks ago we had a big windstorm through here and a lot of trees in the area were blown down or broken.

We had to remove a bishop pine from our front yard because large branches had broken and the tree was leaning into our neighbor's driveway. My husband and friends took down the tree with a chainsaw and the big pieces of trunk one guy took to burn in an outside pit.

The branches are laying in our driveway and we were planning to rent a chipper and then use the wood chips as mulch.

BUT - is it ok to use fresh chips as mulch, or do the chips need to dry out for a few months first? And since they are pine, I guess we need to be careful about where we put the chips because of the acidity, right?

Thanks for advice ... I hated taking down that tree. I hope we can at least get something out of it, rather than taking the branches to the dump.