THE firewood thread

[CanuckBock]

Cute pups!!! Hey...that plank over a log piece...you guys use that for a Korean seesaw? My dad made us something like that once and said he saw kids using it in Korea during the war. Instead of sitting on it, we stood and with each up and down the person was flipped up in the air. Great fun!!! I'd kill myself if I had to do that now but we sure did have fun with it then.

Yeh, made up a hillbilly puppy playground for the pups.

​

Em's on the splish pond (tractor trailer tire with rubber tub on top of rubber mat from pickup truck box<--warned yah...hillbilly totally!), dog agility tire jump...

​

Lacy is on another tire and tub with a purple kiddy pool over it (diggy sand pit-been too wet to uncover that yet!), balance beam (covered that one in blue and purple nail polish in the shape of puppy paws),

Three planks were off cuts from a bridge construction where Rick works...​

The teeter totter was just something natch to add, then the tuggy timber...picked up a tunnel from a kids toy store 14 years ago (last time we had puppy breath).

Hillbilly tuggy timber (dog toys attached by cord to bungy cords)...lots of uses for WOOD here, eh!

​

​

Third full day here and Emmy (younger by a week than Lacy) has already mastered the teeter totter.

​

That indeed IS a teeter totter (seesaw). Plank of rough sawn and a birch firewood round (don't tell Rick, I stole some spikes and one piece of firewood, eh!).

​

The pups immediately got to stripping bark off the round...amongst other additional uses.

​

Plank doubles as an adjustable teething ring too...

​

Yeh, beware to the firewood keepers...there are pilfering thieves about...ready to steal firewood rounds for teeter totter seesaws! Beware, and get splitting them rounds up ... quick like before they are all disappear!

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

 

[Beekissed]

We keep the best wood up on the porch for when the snow really hits and we don't want to try and bring a cart full up a ramp. On days when snow or ice is not a problem there, we bring in the ordinary wood for burning and sometimes mix the best wood~the oak~from the porch to get a better, longer burn.

I LOVE cleaning out the stove because it gives me ashes and I really, really need those ashes for the orchard, garden and other areas. The warm winter has yielded us less ashes than normal, so I'm kind of glad to see more ash production right now.

Those dogs are sure cute!!! Love it when dogs play...you can almost see wolves in how they play.

Right now wood supplies are very good due to the mild winter and it looks as if we may even have to remove wood from the porch come spring instead of use it up as per normal. Wood shed still half full, porch 2/3 rd full, the extra hoop house is mostly full of green wood that is curing out for next season.

Pics of wood gathered early in the fall...

 

[Ole and Lena]

Getting a late start on firewood this year due to the late onset of ground frost. We're still directional drilling in MN in late January.

Has been pretty easy on this years wood pile though. Not sure on how many cords, but I'm about 4 weeks behind typical firewood consumption for this time of year. The pallet wood has been great. Works really good for building some quick coals and heat when starting the stove. I've just been mixing it in with the "normal" tree wood. Haven't even tapped into my pile that has the cherry wood in it yet. Still burning box-elder, elm, ash mix in my early winter pile.

Got started Saturday cutting next years wood. Guy from work just built a new house and piled all the trees he cleared at the bottom of the hill. Quality wood... elm, ash, cherry, maple, some box elder and aspen mixed in. Hell on saw chain since he jackstrawed them together with a skid-steer and got some of the trunks dirty, but still easy wood compared to dragging it out of the forest. Should be able to cut a winter's worth right there. It's 5 minutes from our shop so it's easy to snag on the way home from work.

Can't say enough about that Echo 590. Works great in cold or hot weather. Used it on some storm work this summer in 90 and humid, and just recently trapping some beaver at 15 below. Just always starts, comfortable to cut with, and really powers through tough wood. For $400 you cannot find a better firewood saw IMHO.

 

[Ole and Lena]

Splitters can be lots of fun. Especially the homemade ones cobbled together out of barnyard steel and broken machines. My uncle had one made from an old skid steer auger. He got it on auction in non-working condition and repurposed the hydraulics to a strong pushing action with the addition of the ram off an old backhoe. The carriage and wedge were made from pieces of railroad rail and a differential gear welded and ground to a wedge. Mounted to the skid-steer boom for portable splitting.

Dangerous as hell, no safeties, no check valves on the hydraulics. Perfect for a couple 12 year old farm boys to complete wood chores with, complete with a couple of crappy chainsaws and a 4x4 dodge with no brakes. A few times we took a bath in hydraulic fluid splitting especially gnarly elm logs.

Amazing what creepies live in logs. My chickens love wood splitting, despite the proximity to the chopping block. Favorites are frozen carpenter ants (interesting, they eat them in winter, not summer when they're mobile) and the big fat white grubs that live in the "dirt" in hollow spots.

Worked on my cabin firewood this weekend. Still need to build the cabin, but wood is a timing game, have to get ahead of that now. Totally different ballgame. Jack pine and black spruce. No time to dry out any of the birch and maple available on the land before hunting season. Been able to find some nice solid dead-standing stuff that should dry nicely by late October. Racked in the open sun and breeze one layer deep with a scrap plywood cover angled to slough off the rain. Over the winter, plenty of small birch available that can use a thinning. Site was logged some years ago, and birch re-grew in clumps. Planning on removing all but the best tree from clumps to allow more space for the chosen tree and harvest firewood in the process.

 

[microchick]

This thread just caught my eye. We heat with wood and do our own processing. Two years ago we purchased our first wood splitter at TSC. We love that machine.

My husband looked at your link, beekissed and said that should do the trick and be stronger than you probably really need. The box stores are really silly. They sell the stuff but do not keep the parts on hand for the customers. But HEY! We can order it for you at considerable cost to you.

Several years ago one of our outdoor hydrants sprang a leak. We dug down and found that a washer had given way. Trip to town. They did not have the part. Trip to nearest city. Where we found out that the brand of hydrant we had was no longer being manufactured and therefor there were no repair parts available. That was definitely not the solution we were hoping for. DH decided that the part needed was simple. Just a silly washer. We spent a good hour at Ace Hardware where a clerk helped us comb through every washer they had until we finally found one that looked close enough to the damaged one to take home. It worked and the repair cost waaaaay under a dollar. Sure beat having to replace the entire hydrant at the time, but the MacGyvered repair worked. We don't use the hydrant and it is scheduled for replacement in the future.

Good job on your repair. We have 10 cords stored in our barn, mostly oak and hickory with some honey locust. We have 20 acres of timber that needs thinning so we are never at a loss for wood. What we do not chain down, mother nature does the job for us. Over the course of 2 years we had storms bring down a twin trunked old growth white oak tree. The trunks were over 36"in diameter each. We are still harvesting off of the last trunk. Last year its mate provided us with about 60% of our heating wood. DH and I enjoy harvesting our own wood. We laughing say it keeps us in shape.

So bring on winter is all I can say. We are ready for it.

 

[Ole and Lena]

MacGuyvered repairs are the best kind. Usually something that says John Deer, Case IH, Vermeer or MTD on it has a hardware store or junkyard equivalent for a fraction of the cost. Either that or a bit of time with a Dremel tool or file will adjust the specs as needed.

A large bin of worn out dull drill bits are a wonderful thing to keep on hand. Can match almost any size of pin with hardened steel. Turn the ends blue with a torch if you need to mushroom it in place. Anneal the whole thing if you need softer steel. Also works to turn the shank of a nail or mild steel or brass machine screw down by chucking it in a drill and grinding it against a file if you need a soft pin of custom size. Flat one side with a file for key pins on hubs and clutches. I ran my chainsaw on a homemade clutch pin from fence nail for a week. When you work out in the bush and a hardware store is not an option, you learn these tricks.

 

[Beekissed]

LOVE this pic and LOVE your fireplace!!!!! Especially love your sign on the mantle....means all the world to know that, doesn't it? That pic belongs in a magazine somewhere, to comfort and warm~and taunt~ all those who cannot heat with wood and would love to.

 

[lazy gardener]

I typically buy wood but did have to have a couple of trees removed last winter. Splitting those now. Either way it's SO much cheaper than heating our house with our gas furnace and nothing like wood heat. We have a Country Flame fireplace/furnace that's ducted to the entire house. We love it!! I will admit that by February I am over dealing with the wood though. lol...

Absolutely love it. Nice way to end my day. Redeemed and love to proclaim it.

 

[Beekissed]

Spent this beautiful, balmy day splitting a big pile of oak and cherry...got it all done. Hauled two stacked and heaped truckloads of that home and will do a truck and trailer load tomorrow in hopes of getting the rest of it home. Free firewood given to us by an elderly uncle who had a few trees cut down due to their being dead and insect damaged. HUGE trees.

Slowly but surely that wood shed and porch are being filled. We are WAY late this year on getting that done...the latest I can remember since our first winter of homesteading, when the time usually spent getting in firewood was spent in throwing up a two room log cabin to live in. That year we got in wood in the middle of some deep snows.

 

[microchick]

That is one thing my husband and I always worry about, @Beekissed, getting the wood in early. We aren't kids anymore. We are both in our mid 60s now with our share of aches and pains so we usually try to get trees dropped for firewood during the winter months while the sap is down and then start to chain and split it starting in March so we are finished with it by June so it can finish curing over the hot summer months.

We were a little late this year not finishing until July but the wood still seems to be cured and good to go.

We are lucky in that we have plenty of oak and hickory in our timber that need thinned out, especially hickory. The previous owner grazed cattle and sheep in the timber and they did quite a bit of damage to the new growth hardwoods leaving us with an excess of hickory trees. We are trying to coax the oak back by thinning out the hickory We also have a pond with a lot of overgrowth threes that we have been taking out for the last two years.

Sometimes we wish we had stronger backs or had some stronger backs around us in the form of children to help but it is just him and I and so far we have been able to get the job done.

I don't think we would ever be happy with gas or electric heat again.