How much wood would a wood chipper chop if a wood chopper wasn't completely scared of the wood chipper?

I borrowed my neighbor's wood chipper yesterday with the plan of turning a good-sized pile of buckthorn and other weedy pruning product into a nice pile of mulch.

After a thorough tutorial filled with safety warnings from our kind neighbor I felt confident I would be able to chop up some brush in under 30 minutes. How difficult and dangerous could it be?

Answer? Difficult. Those branches did NOT want to go in the chipper. I might as well have been feeding wild, sharp-clawed ferrets into the thing. After five minutes I was no longer able to suppress the images of the wood chipper scene in Fargo so I gave up. Gary's going to give it a shot tomorrow.

The pruning job:

The corner before

The corner after