Work Done in 2022

[Gearhead660]

Nice morning in the woods. Grabbed a load, split and stacked.

 

[heavy hammer]

kennyp2339, it's a good and bad problem to have. I have been called in a lot lately, and extended days. It looks to be a good year work wise but like everyone material is becomming a problem to get ahold of. Stay safe brother!​

 

[kennyp2339]

Checked the weather forecast for this week, temps even a little bit higher now, and Sunny Thursday & Friday forecasted to be in the 60's over here, I'm taking a vacation day on Friday and will get some stacking done in the yard, cant wait.

 

[thewoodlands]

The New York State brush burning ban starts tomorrow so I took care of what I had today.

The first picture is some Chicken Parm the wife made on the 12, the rest are of the fire and deer hanging around today.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

I was expecting to have time this week during a break from homeschooling to get some outside work done: chipping brush, doing some reorganizing to get more wood into our kiln to free up a rack for really fresh stuff, a bit of gardening. That’s been thrown off by my having some sick kiddos and some trips to the doctor and pharmacy and my needing to be inside for them. (Right now the sickest one is dozing on the couch but wants me in the room, so I’m on Hearth.com).

My mother and her three sisters write email to one another every day, and my mother sends her messages to me as well. She’s an impressive lady, and it’s my aspiration one day to be one quarter of the woman that she is. She had a bad winter storm in January that brought down the tops of lots of her trees, and that caused other damage in her woods. She’s been working steadily to clean things up and to add to her woodpile. I thought I’d copy in here a couple paragraphs from her message today so that you all could be as impressed with her as I am. (Keep in mind that she is 85.)

I cut down a 26 foot tree stump this morning and cut it up into 20 blocks. Then I cut branch stubs and branches off another log that is half on the ground and the other half hung up in trees. It got too hot so I quit cutting before I ran out of gas and cleaned up what I had cut and brought 16 blocks of the other pine to the house.

Yesterday afternoon I split all the wood that I had at the end of the shed and hauled another load and split that. I now have those three tiers filled. Before I split more I need to get an area emptied. Guess that is a good problem to have. I am not sure what I will do this afternoon. It is tempting to plant some seeds in the garden.

 

[clancey]

She is impressive indeed...I am almost 80 and could not do 1/16th of what she is doing..God Bless Her....Lucky to have a mom like that...Yes...clancey

 

[thewoodlands]

I started bucking up some pine we've had from the clearing for the new garage in 2018, the best of the worst will get stacked and the rest will be for burning in the outside fireplace.

In picture 2839, you can see the trails still have ice on them.

 

[thewoodlands]

I took the Mahindra 4540 down to plow out the entrance so I could take a ride back in, once that was done I jumped in the rhino and did a check of the area we call up top. Not much came down over the winter but we do have a widowmaker.

The brook is moving pretty good with all the rain we had along with the snow melt.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

What kind of pine is that, @thewoodlands ? You’ve sure got a lot of it.

My husband and I have both been ill this week (along with all four of our children), so yesterday was not a big work day outside as we had hoped. We still did manage to water the garden and to do some wood work, though.

We have a large metal building on a concrete slab that used to be a barn, I believe. It has half walls on the main part, but there is an enclosed room in the back that we use as a kiln, of sorts. It holds one long wood rack, a crib (yes, an old crib that is no longer safe for any babies), and some pallets that we need to build some side rails onto so that they can hold more). Yesterday I moved the oak that was spread out all along the bottom of the long rack to one side so that it wouldn’t get covered with fresher wood, then moved cherry from the pallets beside it, then cedar that has been seasoning in the open-air part of the barn. There was empty space at one end, and my husband bucked and noodled some Live oak yesterday and started filling that. We had to open both doors yesterday to get the temperature down to 86 so that we could work in there. We joke that the place is life threatening in the summer months, but I’m not sure that it’s really a joke. We have just a bit more oak that‘s already down that will go in there in the coming weeks. Then we may top up with large cedar.



A lot of our wood doesn’t need splitting, and it dries pretty well in our Texas heat and low humidity. We just want to fill our kiln as much as possible this spring before the weather gets too hot.

 

[thewoodlands]

What kind of pine is that, @thewoodlands ? You’ve sure got a lot of it.

My husband and I have both been ill this week (along with all four of our children), so yesterday was not a big work day outside as we had hoped. We still did manage to water the garden and to do some wood work, though.

We have a large metal building on a concrete slab that used to be a barn, I believe. It has half walls on the main part, but there is an enclosed room in the back that we use as a kiln, of sorts. It holds one long wood rack, a crib (yes, an old crib that is no longer safe for any babies), and some pallets that we need to build some side rails onto so that they can hold more). Yesterday I moved the oak that was spread out all along the bottom of the long rack to one side so that it wouldn’t get covered with fresher wood, then moved cherry from the pallets beside it, then cedar that has been seasoning in the open-air part of the barn. There was empty space at one end, and my husband bucked and noodled some Live oak yesterday and started filling that. We had to open both doors yesterday to get the temperature down to 86 so that we could work in there. We joke that the place is life threatening in the summer months, but I’m not sure that it’s really a joke. We have just a bit more oak that‘s already down that will go in there in the coming weeks. Then we may top up with large cedar.

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A lot of our wood doesn’t need splitting, and it dries pretty well in our Texas heat and low humidity. We just want to fill our kiln as much as possible this spring before the weather gets too hot.

I hope your whole family is feeling better soon. Our house lot is mostly White Pine until the east and the southside and then it changes to hardwoods.

Our second lot that I do most of my cutting on is pretty much hardwood with some White Pines mixed in, some of the hills have some nice Hemlock on them.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

I hope your whole family is feeling better soon. Our house lot is mostly White Pine until the east and the southside and then it changes to hardwoods.

Our second lot that I do most of my cutting on is pretty much hardwood with some White Pines mixed in, some of the hills have some nice Hemlock on them.

Sounds like a beautiful place.

We are all on the mend. Thank you.

 

[thewoodlands]

Since I plowed out two different entrances for our lot, I'll see if the trail on the second entrance I plowed has lost enough snow too get up to this beech that the wind took down just before winter hit.

If I can make it up, I'll just have to worry about how the footing will be on the side of the hill. The last picture is the ridge heading away from the beech that was taken last year.

 

[NickW]

Since I plowed out two different entrances for our lot, I'll see if the trail on the second entrance I plowed has lost enough snow too get up to this beech that the wind took down just before winter hit.

If I can make it up, I'll just have to worry about how the footing will be on the side of the hill. The last picture is the ridge heading away from the beech that was taken last year.

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That's primo firewood... hope it stayed up off the ground. Be careful though, cutting on hills can be dicey. Love a mix of ash and beech in the stove or fireplace.

 

[thewoodlands]

That's primo firewood... hope it stayed up off the ground. Be careful though, cutting on hills can be dicey. Love a mix of ash and beech in the stove or fireplace.

It sure is, we like burning beech when our coldest temps hit, usually late December and January.

For the heating season of 2022 - 23, we'll have two face cord of ironwood and two of beech ready. We'll be burning a bunch of ash too.

 

[thewoodlands]

It was a good start on getting some firewood, the beech was still off the ground ( a small beech was holding it up) I'm hoping for a face cord out of what was down, I still have to fell what's still standing.

I shoveled part of the trail before I went up the trail, three nice hemlocks were blocking the sun to that area but the trail is ok until mother nature does the rest. The last picture is some of what I shoveled out of the trail.

 

[thewoodlands]

I had planned on felling some ash but the wind had the tops rocking back & forth so I decided on some smaller ironwood that the tops were damaged or bent over (growing towards the forest floor) I think it took longer clearing all the dead chit out of the way so I could get the rhino and the trailer back to the first two. The third ironwood I saw on my way out, it was uprooted some and the top was in another tree.

Picture 2871 is a dead maple that I'll need to get.

 

[Smokepole]

Working up a red oak this week. It was 26" through the butt and 80ft. tall.
The covered piles are hickory and ash. I always tarp my piles until I have
time to stack.

 

[thewoodlands]

Working up a red oak this week. It was 26" through the butt and 80ft. tall.
The covered piles are hickory and ash. I always tarp my piles until I have
time to stack.

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Nice work @Smokepole , that's some nice looking land you're cutting on.

 

[thewoodlands]

I s/s some pine today, it's from the clearing I did in 2018 so even though it's not the best pine, it will keep the oil truck from coming up the driveway.

Picture 2882 is the pine that was stacked before today.

 

[bladeofanduril]

I'm just getting started. The wood stove isn't even in at the dealer yet. This was all free, except for the landscaping cloth. The wood is ash, beech and a few logs of magnolia that I collected. I'm headed back out this afternoon to harvest some more unwanted ash.

 

[thewoodlands]

I finished up the stack of pine from yesterday and started a new one, I would like to finish up the stack I started today by the end of the day Sunday but we'll see.

 

[stoveliker]

I'm just getting started. The wood stove isn't even in at the dealer yet. This was all free, except for the landscaping cloth. The wood is ash, beech and a few logs of magnolia that I collected. I'm headed back out this afternoon to harvest some more unwanted ash.

View attachment 294031

nice, get as much as possible; the drier it is before you burn, the better it is.

I would loose the tarp underneath; water may pool. Much better to have the rain drain away from the wood.

 

[bladeofanduril]

nice, get as much as possible; the drier it is before you burn, the better it is.

I would loose the tarp underneath; water may pool. Much better to have the rain drain away from the wood.

The "tarp" underneath is landscaping cloth to keep grass/weeds down. It is breathable and doesn't block moisture so shouldn't be an issue. I grabbed two more car loads of ash yesterday, so I should be at about a cord total so far, though I still need to split an stack all of the new wood.

 

[thewoodlands]

We seem like we go from winter to summer and just skip spring the past couple of years so today we put in one small load of ash before the colder weather hits.

I didn't buck up any pine today but took time to sharpen up some chains.

 

[Solarguy3500]

This weekend I worked on clearing a trail in the woods behind my garage. It's something I've been wanting to do since we bought the property in 2019 and just hadn't gotten around to it yet. I could tell that someone had been maintaining a trail through the woods in the past, but they had let it go for some time before we bought it. I actually started on this a few months ago before winter really set in. Here's looking down the trail before I opened it up. There's a beech that had fallen across it at some point over the years.


Mostly it was just small beech suckers springing up from the roots of all the beech trees in the woods as they are the predominant trees. Here are a few more pictures of the trail after I cleared it.




There were a couple of trees that were big enough to cut up for firewood. Surprisingly, that beech that had been down for years was still sound except for the bottom few feet. I left a few piles of wood along the newly cleared trail that I'll go get probably next weekend.

I did all this cutting with my new Ego battery powered saw that was my Christmas present from my wife. I really like it so far for smaller stuff and I still have my 372 XPW for bigger stuff if I need it.