Work Done 2023

[NickW]

The missus came up to the Northwoods last night to help finalize the flooring layout by the fireplace. Today we stacked close to a cord of wood that I css last fall. Mix of cherry, birch, maple, oak and aspen. Supposed to get 6-10" tomorrow night through Monday.

 

[ClintonH]

We got the last of the slabwood cut/in the barn this week. I borrowed a Wood Mizer from my uncle last summer and sawed 25 logs for lumber. It's mostly red oak with a few hard maple. It made 2.5 cord.

 

[thewoodlands]

Through our county, we bought ten Norway Spruce. We have an spot on the northside of the house property that was hit pretty hard with winds that took down most of the trees in that area, all ten were planted there today.

The trees are planted six feet apart (some a bit more) with the second row eight and nine feet apart. I did use three t-post on each tree and then used some plastic fencing with zip ties, hopefully this will keep the deer off them.

We planted these for privacy but I did see when we placed the order you can't cut these down.

 

[Wood1Dennis]

I'm almost done with my firewood processing for the year. About 5 cords cut split and stacked this year putting me at least 3 years ahead of my wood furnace.
I still have the three pieces in the second picture (1 black ash and 2 yellow birch) to process, and the rest of the limb wood pile to stack. I expect to have them worked up this week. The fresh cuts in the pictures are this years work and I have one more pile too. Nothing quite like the satisfaction a nice neat firewood pile!

 

[Garbanzo62]

Dropped the 35 ft stalk of dead ash that the top came down in Dec. Bucked it up to 16". Will start whacking it with the splitting maul as time permits.

 

[Bobbob]

Me and the boss have been busy cutting and dragging 30 some trees we have lost in the three wind storms we've had in the last month. Once we get them all drug to the pile we will cut and split for the 24 and 25 burning seasons

 

[Woody Stover]

Today we stacked close to a cord of wood that I css last fall.

Hey, wait a minute--You stacked stacked wood? That sounds like the kind of back-tracking maneuver I do on a regular basis. 😖 😆

sawed 25 logs for lumber.

Are you a woodworker, or what becomes of the lumber?

I'm almost done with my firewood processing for the year. About 5 cords cut split and stacked this year putting me at least 3 years ahead of my wood furnace.
I still have the three pieces in the second picture (1 black ash and 2 yellow birch) to process, and the rest of the limb wood pile to stack. I expect to have them worked up this week. The fresh cuts in the pictures are this years work and I have one more pile too. Nothing quite like the satisfaction a nice neat firewood pile!

View attachment 312059

Impressive stacks! 👍
Thanks for the Black Ash pic. Appears that it's different than White Ash in a couple ways--has a more flaky bark than White, and an almost burnt-orange heartwood, with a contrasting light-colored sapwood ring..
Every time someone mentions "Ash," I look at their pics to see if it appears to be White. As far as I know, I've seen only White around here so far..

Dropped the 35 ft stalk of dead ash that the top came down in Dec. Bucked it up to 16". Will start whacking it with the splitting maul as time permits.

View attachment 312069

Now that looks like some good ol' White. 😏 Appears in about the same shape as the last one I got--slightly punky, but still solid enough that you feel like it's worth the effort. To me, anyway...

Me and the boss have been busy cutting and dragging 30 some trees we have lost in the three wind storms we've had in the last month. Once we get them all drug to the pile we will cut and split for the 24 and 25 burning seasons

View attachment 312073

Man, 30 is a lotta trees!😖 Maple? That bottom one, behind the big boy, almost looks like Cheery bark, but what I can see of the end cut doesn't look right..

 

[NickW]

Sorry @Woody Stover, just cut and split in fall 🤪. Then it got buried in snow. I typically always css so my splits aren't laying on the ground, so I get used to using the acronym. And yes, I occasionally restack stacks because I decided the original location was poor, but I REALLY try not to...

 

[Wood1Dennis]

Impressive stacks! 👍
Thanks for the Black Ash pic. Appears that it's different than White Ash in a couple ways--has a more flaky bark than White, and an almost burnt-orange heartwood, with a contrasting light-colored sapwood ring..
Every time someone mentions "Ash," I look at their pics to see if it appears to be White. As far as I know, I've seen only White around here so far..

Hi Woody, I prefer the white ash but I have to admit, often I can't tell the difference until I start cutting. The dark heartwood is the key, that and it is a lot less dense than white. I also find that it likes to grow in the swampier parts of the woods, or did until the ash borer came along.
I really prefer the white ash, it is a lot denser, higher BTU wood but I will take black ash as long as it is solid. Another thing about black ash, it goes punky a lot faster. In fact that log in the second picture, and one in the foreground on the first are both pretty far gone. They did not make my wood piles, I will CSS and use them for campfire wood later this summer or next! The yellow birch makes some of the best firewood I get here.

 

[Woody Stover]

yellow birch makes some of the best firewood I get here.

Yeah, a lot of the BTU charts I see show Yellow Birch about equal to White Ash.

 

[Woody Stover]

A couple days ago, I came across a down Cheery log that I've known about for a few years, that I had temporarily "lost." Mayapple is coming in.
All the Cheery sapwood was gone, and there's a few White Ash splits in the trailer underneath, from a small, fallen tree. Both logs started getting a bit spotty at the butt ends, but I got a decent load, anyway.
I also saw a couple more dead standing Ash over there. I need to get down wood first, though.


Yesterday I went into "fern valley" to check out a couple of dead Red Elm I saw there a few days ago. It's also "blackberry valley," so wearing a tee shirt, I got shredded. 😆
The one on the ground (not too visible in the pics) was kinda shot, but I got some kindling plus a decent amount of bigger stuff before the 8" trunk started getting too punky. So to finish the load I dropped a dead-standing one next to it, about 6" (no tree pic, just the wood.) It was getting dark so I bailed with only a partial load. But I saw two more dead right there as well, like 8", so I'll try to get those this afternoon. EDIT: Huh, I didn't see it in the last pic right away, but there are some of those Hickory "flowers" on the right, that the leaf stalks pop out of..

 

[NickW]

Look how green it is there! I saw some skunk cabbage starting to come up in the swamp the other day, but we're covered in snow again...

 

[Woody Stover]

Look how green it is there! I saw some skunk cabbage starting to come up in the swamp the other day, but we're covered in snow again...

Yep, already getting harder to pick a quad path through, with visibility cut so that you can't see logs and other stuff that you need to avoid..

 

[Woody Stover]

Well, another late start plus problems with the first of the two Red Elms next to each other (see above,) limited me to one load before dark, not heaped up. 😔
I cut the tree on the right first, after clipping a vine that was growing up it, and had jumped across into an adjacent tree. I thought the vine would tear free as the tree started to fall, but it held on and pulled the fall slightly off line, hanging it up on the adjacent tree. 😖
First I hooked a chain and quad to the butt end and tried to pull the bottom sideways. It was pulling through the soil for several feet, but then got grabbed by the submerged roots of another tree close by. So I headed back to the house to get the peavey. I found that the tree was too heavy for me to roll out of the hang-up, so I cut a couple sections off the butt end to make it a little lighter, and to get the trunk more vertical, with less weight leaning on the holding tree. I finally got that bugger on the ground, but quite a bit of daylight was lost in the process.
Here's the load from the lower part of that tree, plus a few whiter-looking rounds on the right from the previous day's cutting of a tree on the ground that got a bit too punky, about half way down. I'm finding that Red Elm holds up pretty well after it had died, but not forever, so I need to get them a little quicker if I want 100% BTU wood.
Second pic is of previous wood brought to SIL2's shed...Cherry I split yesterday, partially buried by a subsequent Red Elm trailer load I dumped out there.
I still need to get the top of the hung tree cut up, its partner Red Elm, plus a couple of smaller dead-standers that are right there. But I'm thinking I may be able to finish filling this shed, with just what you see there already. In that case, extra wood will go to another stacking area for future years.

 

[thewoodlands]

I started on the two limbs in picture 3596, in picture 3608 you can see a maple round, I had it wedged underneath the maple so it wouldn't roll to the inside (my working area) it worked out perfect.

When I started cutting more towards the top in picture 3606, the tree came free and rolled some the other way and the maple round came loose.

 

[Woody Stover]

When I started cutting more towards the top in picture 3606, the tree came free and rolled some the other way and the maple round came loose.

Nice grab..Sugar Maple?

 

[thewoodlands]

Nice grab..Sugar Maple?

I think so, all the buds were gone from the deer eating them, I'll see if I can get a picture of the leaves from what's still standing. I'll be moving some wood so I can stack this maple in that area. I'll have room for three face cord, that part of the tree should fill that. We have more damaged ironwood, beech and wjat I think is a barkless ironwood in the same area. I also would like another three ash on the ground before all the leaves come out.

Tomorrow will be a shoulder season wood day, hopefully I fell another four or five dead pine.

 

[Woody Stover]

Yeah, I think I see some of the scaly, flaky Sugar bark there, but hard to tell for sure..

 

[thewoodlands]

Yeah, I think I see some of the scaly, flaky Sugar bark there, but hard to tell for sure..

There was a day when we had more cherry than any other types of wood. The last four years I started felling more damaged or diseased beech along with getting more damaged ironwood and maple.

The wife wasn't sure about burning pine years back but after she went along with it, she wants more in our inventory so after taking care of this maple and some pine on the house lot, I'll be c/s some pine on our other lot.

For this past winter we had 12 face cord of pine ready, I hope we have the same amount up with maybe a second stacking area for pine going in some place on the lot.

 

[Woody Stover]

I continued on the Red Elms behind SIL2's house, in fern valley. Nice day to work..80, not humid, nice breeze. Just enough heat to break a little sweat. 🤗 😅
It's not all roses though...or maybe it is. There are several of the invasive Multiflora rose bushes down there. If they grab your skin, you'd better stop in a hurry or they will rip your flesh like a weasel. 🦫🩸



And what day in the woods would be complete without seeing this charming plant? 😒 There's not too much in this particular area...some places, it's thick, and can get thigh-deep.


So this was the remaining top of the tree that got hung up yesterday, the wood I got today. The wood up there has the pink hue, no punkage at all.


This is the sister tree, about 8" or so. That thing is like 70' tall, though! 😲 There are also a couple of smaller dead-stander Reds to get after that...a 6" and a 3". You can also see part of that damn vine that pulled the fall offline yesterday. 😠 That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it. 😏


And there are a couple in the ravine. I plunge-cut into the one, a ways up from the bottom, and it seemed like it might be pretty solid yet. Not sure about the one lying long-ways, though...didn't go down in there.
If there's a little bark left on 'em, like there was on what I got today, you know they haven't been dead for real long, and the wood is going to be mostly solid. On the barkless ones, it's a crapshoot, like these ravine sticks, and Big Red was.

 

[thewoodlands]

After we put in some pine this morning for next week, we took down two dead white pine. The wife was in the RTV doing indirect pulls with the cable, the second one didn't need it but we still used a cable.

The two trails in that area we felled the pine across are opened back up again, I'll need to clean up more pine branches but that will be for another day.

 

[Bobbob]

Hey, wait a minute--You stacked stacked wood? That sounds like the kind of back-tracking maneuver I do on a regular basis. 😖 😆

Are you a woodworker, or what becomes of the lumber?

Impressive stacks! 👍
Thanks for the Black Ash pic. Appears that it's different than White Ash in a couple ways--has a more flaky bark than White, and an almost burnt-orange heartwood, with a contrasting light-colored sapwood ring..
Every time someone mentions "Ash," I look at their pics to see if it appears to be White. As far as I know, I've seen only White around here so far..

Now that looks like some good ol' White. 😏 Appears in about the same shape as the last one I got--slightly punky, but still solid enough that you feel like it's worth the effort. To me, anyway...
View attachment 312099

Man, 30 is a lotta trees!😖 Maple? That bottom one, behind the big boy, almost looks like Cheery bark, but what I can see of the end cut doesn't look right..

Yeah, we'll be busy for awhile. We lost 5 cherry, 4 ash, 3 beech, 1 oak and the rest a mix of maple and poplar.

 

[thewoodlands]

Me and the boss have been busy cutting and dragging 30 some trees we have lost in the three wind storms we've had in the last month. Once we get them all drug to the pile we will cut and split for the 24 and 25 burning seasons

View attachment 312073

Do you get permission from the dog before you start cutting? What types of wood is in the pile?

 

[thewoodlands]

This is work I need done before June hits, we had a windstorm that hit on 12/15/2021 that damaged these trees.

In picture 2628 the part on the ground has been taking care of, the part standing I'll get, 2642 hopefully came down, if not we'll see if we can winch it off the other tree and the last two are of the same beech that broke off but was hung up in another tree, I think it came down over the winter.

 

[Bobbob]

Do you get permission from the dog before you start cutting? What types of wood is in the pile?

He wants to go to the woods everyday. Isn't much help though! Pile is a combination of cherry, ash, maple, few small oak and beech. Left all the poplar lay first now