Tractors and wood! Show your pics

[Gordon Gould]

Our neighbor likes to make some big wreath decorations for their porch ands asks me for boughs. Sometimes she makes a large one in the shape of a horses neck and head for the gable end. Pretty neat looking. I brought her a top and some limbs today.

gg

 

[WinterDeere]

I'm trying to remember to grab some photos when out playing with firewood, but it's honestly hard to remember. We keep two woodstoves going 24/7 thru the winter, one load atop the next from now thru March, and then overnights only October into May. So, moving firewood is just part of every day, and some firewood processing or harvesting happens nearly every weekend. Daily chores aren't something that often make you stop to think you should take photos.

Anyway, I moved some more wood up to the house this morning, apparently split and stacked in the shed exactly 4 years ago:



At the house, I park it on a patio outside the 1730's kitchen, which is now our walk-out basement door. It's sheltered by the porch, and subsequently porch roof, above. So, even in bad weather, I can walk out there in my pajamas for late night or early morning reloads:



Last weekend, I did a little processing, refilling a 1-cord bay that I had emptied the weekend prior. Constant FIFO rotation, which is how we stay 3-4 years ahead, and ensure the oak will always be dry and ready to burn.



My process is simple. I harvest logs and haul them home in 15 foot lengths, where I stack them in piles by year. You can see here that I'm just finishing the 2023 pile, and our 2024 pile is real small, as I have most of our 2024 wood presently stacked elsewhere.

When it's time to split, I lift a log off the pile with the forks on my loader or chain slings from the bucket, lay it on the ground, and buck it to 18" lengths. I roll those lengths into the loader bucket, drive it to the splitter, and park it with the bucket at hip height, so I can easily swing rounds onto the splitter without bending and lifting.

The large debris pile is not normal. I always generate a lot of debris when splitting, mostly bark that falls off the logs as I split them, but this pile is much larger than normal due to our present burn ban causing things to pile up, and the higher fraction of EAB-killed ash we are splitting. EAB ash logs rot pretty quick, and so I'm throwing away a lot more less-prime wood as I split it, than we normally do.

 

[shooterdon]

I'm trying to remember to grab some photos when out playing with firewood, but it's honestly hard to remember. We keep two woodstoves going 24/7 thru the winter, one load atop the next from now thru March, and then overnights only October into May. So, moving firewood is just part of every day, and some firewood processing or harvesting happens nearly every weekend. Daily chores aren't something that often make you stop to think you should take photos.

Anyway, I moved some more wood up to the house this morning, apparently split and stacked in the shed exactly 4 years ago:

View attachment 1930465 View attachment 1930466

At the house, I park it on a patio outside the 1730's kitchen, which is now our walk-out basement door. It's sheltered by the porch, and subsequently porch roof, above. So, even in bad weather, I can walk out there in my pajamas for late night or early morning reloads:

View attachment 1930467

Last weekend, I did a little processing, refilling a 1-cord bay that I had emptied the weekend prior. Constant FIFO rotation, which is how we stay 3-4 years ahead, and ensure the oak will always be dry and ready to burn.

View attachment 1930464 View attachment 1930463

My process is simple. I harvest logs and haul them home in 15 foot lengths, where I stack them in piles by year. You can see here that I'm just finishing the 2023 pile, and our 2024 pile is real small, as I have most of our 2024 wood presently stacked elsewhere.

When it's time to split, I lift a log off the pile with the forks on my loader or chain slings from the bucket, lay it on the ground, and buck it to 18" lengths. I roll those lengths into the loader bucket, drive it to the splitter, and park it with the bucket at hip height, so I can easily swing rounds onto the splitter without bending and lifting.

The large debris pile is not normal. I always generate a lot of debris when splitting, mostly bark that falls off the logs as I split them, but this pile is much larger than normal due to our present burn ban causing things to pile up, and the higher fraction of EAB-killed ash we are splitting. EAB ash logs rot pretty quick, and so I'm throwing away a lot more less-prime wood as I split it, than we normally do.

I could never back that trailer into that space. That takes talent.

 

[wolc123]

That’s an impressive operation WD and it looks to be very efficient. I guess it needs to be with the shear volume of firewood that you go thru.

Here, up near the Canadian border about half way between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario in WNY, we only use an average of (6) face cords per season to provide most of the heat for our 2000 sq ft, well-insulated 1980’s ranch. I can usually make that mostly thru the summer in my spare time.

I used to enjoy doing firewood in the winter also, back before “climate change” in the years when our ground would freeze up good, but that was more than 20 years ago. It just causes too much damage to the ground from rutting to try and do it in the cooler months in most recent years.

This year has been an exception though, the worst late season drought that I can recall. We have been almost without any fall rains this year. My little pond is almost dried up and there is no standing water anywhere in the fields.

Our farm is particularly low lying and the dominant species was ash. EAB has taken all of them and about 90 % of what I’ve been burning the last 15 years has been ash. I’m getting pretty tired of burning that now, and I will be thankful when we have finally seen the last of it (I’m guessing in maybe 4 more years).

I don’t try to cut the standing dead ones because it’s way too risky. I do try to get on the easily accessible ones quickly after they fall if the ground is dry enough though, because they do get bad quick, after they hit the ground.

Yesterday, I was out hunting in a tree stand built in a large poplar and I noted a dead ash about 20” at the base was leaning against it. The stand was about 10 ft up and I tried rocking the ash to fell it manually, but was unable to loosen it from the upper branch and vine entanglement.

It’s going to be a bit of a project, but I’m thinking of going back there Sunday, after church, and attaching a chain as high as I can reach. I’ll attach a 1/2” wire rope to that chain and run it thru a snatch block attached to a tree further down the hedge row, then run it back to my tractor, the other way. The ash should fall easily towards the snatch block.

It looked like some nice well seasoned wood and I’ll chunk it up when it’s safely on the ground and add it to the growing pile in my splitter shed. I plan on working on that over the one week deer hunting break that we have over Christmas.

There is only room for another face cord or so in my 24 face cord capacity woodshed. This all looks like it will be dry enough to burn right away, so I’ll leave the excess in the splitter shed and burn it first, rather than last like usual.

While I was rocking that tree yesterday, I kept my head up watching for falling widowmakers. The snatch block, wire rope and tractor should be a safe way to get it down on the ground.

Hopefully, I can locate my snatch block and wire rope. It’s going to be fun to get a little break from deer hunting (haven’t even seen one since gun season started). I got some spare time this weekend, because a lake effect snow storm took out our planned trip up to the in-laws place, up in the Adirondacks.

They get it from Lake Ontario. Where we are is just a tad north of the Lake Erie snow belt. They are a little north of the typical Lake Ontario snow belt, but the winds have pushed the current storm north. They are about half way thru getting a predicted 3-5 feet of the cold white stuff right now.

 

[WinterDeere]

I could never back that trailer into that space. That takes talent.

It was very difficult, at first. But like anything you have to do frequently enough, your mind adapts, and it eventually becomes second-nature.

If you’re used to backing up regular landscape or boat trailers, you know everything it reversed from backing up a vehicle. The front axle on this trailer reverses everything a second time, albeit with an extra chance to jack knife, but that articulation point also opens up additional ways to snake it around a corner, as I have to do there.

So now my only real problem with it is that, after a full winter of backing that thing up, I look like an amateur at the boat ramp each spring! I have to re-train my brain when switching from that wagon to a regular trailer, whereas it used to be second nature to back up boat trailers, without having to really think about it.

 

[BackRoad]

That's a detailed operation Mr. Winterdeere. Bet you look forward to May!

Not sure if it's just the EAB Ash, but it does seem to develop rot fairly quickly where the bark has remained intact. Areas without bark seem to start drying out nicely even before bucking into firewood lengths.

A few miles from me is a busy processing facility dedicated to making Traeger branded pellets for wood smokers. Stacks and stacks of logs (not sure of species) pre-drying...and all de-barked. It makes a difference.

 

[WinterDeere]

I used to enjoy doing firewood in the winter also, back before “climate change” in the years when our ground would freeze up good, but that was more than 20 years ago. It just causes too much damage to the ground from rutting to try and do it in the cooler months in most recent years.

That is a problem here, too. Probably always was, even before climate change, as we’re a good bit south of you. I try to do my winter processing before lunch, while the ground is frozen hard, since the sun starts softening the surface when air temp hits about 28-30F. On cloudy days, I can usually process all day, as long as it was below freezing the night before and air temp remains below about 34F.

We get stretches of a week here or there, with overnight lows around 0F and daytime highs near 20F, but our most common weather throughout the majority of winter is 15-20F overnight and 30-35F by mid-afternoon.

Our farm is particularly low lying and the dominant species was ash. EAB has taken all of them and about 90 % of what I’ve been burning the last 15 years has been ash. I’m getting pretty tired of burning that now, and I will be thankful when we have finally seen the last of it (I’m guessing in maybe 4 more years).

Same. I was burning nothing but oak for about 8 years after Hurricane Sandy, then mostly hickory after a rare 2019 tornado took out most of our local hickory, but now it’s nearly all ash. You’ll always see some walnut in my stacks, which makes interesting color patterns when stacked amongst ash, since my own yard is about half walnut trees.

Ash is low BTU, and rots too quick in log form. But it is nice to split, and is way less messy than hickory, which is a friggin dusty mess thanks to our powder post beetles. Walnut seems to be near ash on BTU scale, but leaves so much ash volume in the stove that I’ve grown to hate burning walnut.

Oak is probably my favorite overall, only because I have enough inventory to let it dry for 4 years. But I know oak is the nemesis of many wood burners, as they don’t allow nearly enough time for it to properly dry. Three summers is about the minimum dry time for most oak species, esp. white oaks, if you want to burn them in any modern (cat or non-cat) stove.

 

[WinterDeere]

A few miles from me is a busy processing facility dedicated to making Traeger branded pellets for wood smokers. Stacks and stacks of logs (not sure of species) pre-drying...and all de-barked. It makes a difference.

Maybe I should look at a method for de-barking before I stack the logs. The bark usually falls off when I’m splitting and stacking the stuff, as my backlog is such that the logs are usually sitting 12-18 months before I split them. That’s why I have them up on sleepers.

I suspect the condition of the tree going into those log piles is more a factor, than anything else. I say this because there’s no rhyme or reason to which logs rot before processing. If it were always those on bottom, or always those on top of the pile, then I’d blame my method. Or if it were always one species over another, I’d blame the species. But other than ash having a higher probability of rot than some others, it seems to be purely random.

One thing I can say about oak, is that I’ve brought home big oaks that have been on the ground where they fell, maybe up to 10 years in some cases. The outer sapwood may be punky rot, but the heartwood is always solid gold. It makes a lot of debris for the burn pile, as I remove all the sapwood from those logs, but I still get plenty of good wood from them.

 

[dodge man]

I end up with a lot of hickory also and very dusty. My wood pile is about 150 feet from the house on a large old concrete dog kennel. I usually haul it up to the house in my FEL or a wheel barrow. I intentionally throw it in hard whacking off a lot of dust and it also debarks some of it.

 

[shooterdon]

Maybe I should look at a method for de-barking before I stack the logs. The bark usually falls off when I’m splitting and stacking the stuff, as my backlog is such that the logs are usually sitting 12-18 months before I split them. That’s why I have them up on sleepers.

I suspect the condition of the tree going into those log piles is more a factor, than anything else. I say this because there’s no rhyme or reason to which logs rot before processing. If it were always those on bottom, or always those on top of the pile, then I’d blame my method. Or if it were always one species over another, I’d blame the species. But other than ash having a higher probability of rot than some others, it seems to be purely random.

One thing I can say about oak, is that I’ve brought home big oaks that have been on the ground where they fell, maybe up to 10 years in some cases. The outer sapwood may be punky rot, but the heartwood is always solid gold. It makes a lot of debris for the burn pile, as I remove all the sapwood from those logs, but I still get plenty of good wood from them.

I bought a load of debarked logs and the chain seemed to last longer. But there is no easy cheap way to debark logs.