Up until a few years ago I was receiving regular deliveries of wood chips from the local tree service. This arrangement benefited both parties as it provided the tree service with a free and convenient spot to dump their waste, while I gained an extremely useful garden amendment. For over 15 years I laid cardboard in my garden paths and covered it with chips to suppress weeds. I periodically raked back the uppermost chips on the paths to harvest the soft, brown organic layer that formed as the chips decayed, which I shoveled into the adjacent bed. It was a great system until the chips ran out.
I haven't queried the owners of the service to find out why my supply dried up, but I'm guessing it's because demand has increased as more people have realized the usefulness of the chips. Or perhaps pandemic-induced shortages created a market for the chips and the days of giveaways are over.
This lack has created problems because I was dependent on chips to control weeds and cover areas of bare soil. Valuing and finding uses for such waste products are core components of permaculture and other approaches that promote environmentally friendly food production. No-till methods often rely on chips and cardboard, another waste product, to build organic matter and suppress weeds. This works well when there's a relatively affluent class willing to spend big bucks to have trees cut down and chipped, and as long as shipping accoutrements such as boxes and pallets become superfluous once products have reached their destinations.
Such conditions will not last, and I view the lack of available wood chips as a harbinger of change. Growing environmental consciousness has done little to reduce the waste stream (look at plastic); we permaculturists and no-tillers are merely taking advantage of the abundant “waste,” to make food production easier, skimming what is useful from the Amazon River of trash that is constantly flowing by. Interrupting the waste stream and finding uses for stuff that might otherwise end up at the dump is wonderful, but not sustainable. As natural resources become scarcer, the more useful waste will disappear as my wood chips did. This will force us to find or create truly sustainable alternatives, which in the long run means reducing imported inputs and producing what we need on site.
For now I've settled on plain cardboard to line my paths. It isn't aesthetically pleasing, but it does the trick. It will probably be available for a while and it buys me time while I adjust to a wood-chip-free lifestyle. Part of this adjustment is simply replacing chips with grass clippings, pulled weeds, and banana leaves, but a larger part is a mental revision of my idea of what a garden should look like. Letting go of the need for Martha Stewart-esque perfection in favor of a more utilitarian look is in the works. Such a garden might not produce as many stellar photographs for getting likes on social media, but I foresee a near future in which pumping out as many veggies as possible will trump the need for lovely optics.
For many, the food forest represents the epitome of sustainability due its mimicry of a maturing woodland. I view the other 22.9 acres of the farm as a giant, developing food forest, and jealously protect my flat and sunny opening from encroachment by the trees and shrubs that would take over the potager. While I applaud the movement toward perennial crops, it's the tomatoes, potatoes, summer squashes, eggplants, and green beans that feed us during the summer months, and I won't be giving up intensively-cultivated annual veggie crops anytime soon. The garden might look different in the future, but it will remain.