Cutting Fire Wood

Well I'm a little behind on my wood cutting again this year. There's a lot of dead ash trees standing in the woods, plus many maples that lost their tops in an ice storm several years back. We don't cut trees unless they are dead or deformed. There will be fire wood here as long as I'm alive. Usually my son comes up on a Saturday or Sunday and the two of us can fill 1 trailer in about 2 hours. We drop and block them where they fall. the Kubota with the 3pt spliter can get right to where the blocks are to split them, and the trailers are no wider than the tractor which has been narrowed up, worked well. All the mess was left in the woods. This year I have to do it a little diff. as the son has 3 blown discs in his back and can't help. Yesterday I drug out dead and downers to the edge of the field and blocked them there. Very time consuming and dirt on logs dulling the saw chain. I got the wife to go up with me today, to run the spliter and help out, but she gets cold easy. Any how we had a good weekend. The fireplace in the pic provides us with about 90% of our heat. We do burn about 150 gal of fuel oil per year also. The wood rack on the left of the fireplace is a dumb waiter. Up in the trusses above the ceiling I mounted an 1100# linepull Harbor Freight winch on on a wood framework that transfers the load down to the cellar floor The steel trolly runs in overhead door track. I can back my wood trailers and tractor in to my cellar. I striped down an old electric feed cart to transport the wood from trailer or pile to the dumb waiter when I lower it down to that level. It beats the He!! out of carrying wood up stair steps. Just a final note. the fire place is a 0 clearance Fireplace Extrordinair.Which has a cadalitic convereter that heats up to 1200 degrees and reburns the smoke. The mantle was a standing dead 10" maple from the woods and most of the stone is manmade, except the arch around the doors. That is natural stone which I dug out of the ground in Duansburg NY when I built a comercial building there. Its slate, and came out of the ground in large peices about 20" wide and 4-6" thick and sometimes 8' long with a Cat 220 Hoe when we excavated the site. I set a bunch of these peices aside during the excavation. They're even laiden with fosiles of huge tropical furns.

Great article and pictures. Thanks for sharing.

beautiful fireplace! bill m.

There was a round nose 300 at a plow party I participated in this fall. They are so homely you actually start liking there looks after a while.

Nice stone work around the fireplace--it wouldn't look out of place in a castle!

Glad to hear I'm not the only one behind the ball getting firewood in. Was out this morning cutting some for myself.

Great work on the stone fireplace. Those Extrordinair inserts are Very nice.

I just finished laying the new bluestone for my hearth a few weeks ago.

Ben

Hey Aderondack Guy!

Hard to tell in that Picture, does that 3pt splitter have wheels? How's that work?

Just bought a older used Northern Tool unit, works well however the cross arm was bent. Have it in the shop welding on a new cross arm and was thinking about modifying it to be a little easier to store, and move around when not on the tractor.

Lloyd

What's that white stuff on the ground?

The item behind the Kubota you're sitting on looks interesting. Is that your wood splitter? Would you post a picture of it? Paul

Your son has THREE blown disks? Wow, that's gotta hurt. Hope he can get help for it soon. Jim

hey ,that looks like an apple butter kettle that you have your wood in , very nice .., Larry

Nice pictures and looks like a good setup for retrieving your firewood. Always nice to see good stone work too.

He's been to a couple of specialists, and they don't want to operate at his age 39. He's been on cortozone which helps. He had to quit his union job as a mason, and did find a job in the local Walmart distribution center which is less taxing on his back. He is not a happy camper. Says the job is Ok, but I know he would rather be doing something else. For now he is doing what he has to to pay the bills.

Nice pictures of the fireplace, and the wall paper is neat also.

Cool !!!!!!

Gene

Hey Case Guy, I guess if you didn't have a tractor that could pull "doubles" then you would be even farther behind than you are now! Good looking set-up. Dale

I gotta admit, when I saw that lash-up, and your handle (Adirondack), couldn't help wondering how it was gonna work going downhill. But looks like everything is pretty flat, so all is well.

Cute Case tractor- I see that model around here from time to time, but I have NEVER seen one that wasn't completely beat to death! Half the sheet metal gone, other half crumpled like tin foil, everything cobbled together, etc. Didn't know how nice they could look!

I was off Thanksgiving week and took over 4 full cords of seasoned to my brother to add to what he already has. He heats almost exclusively with wood. Has a gas furnace for backup. I have the woods, so I help him out. He's my brother.

Today I stopped at a gas station and filled up and saw bundled firewood by the gas pumps. See them at 7-Elevens too, but really never paid attention. Today I saw them stacked by the gas pumps and misread the price. Thought was $2.99 for about five or six pieces, which I though was fair. I went inside to pay for my gas and commented on it and got corrected. Price was $12.99 for about 5 or 6 pieces. Holy cow! There are folks that pay it though. Folks only want a far and few romantic evening I figure.

Anyone trying to ban it where you are? There's a few towns in Illinois and Indiana trying to ban fireplace burning, and just north of me in Michigan a town that has. The mayor of my county seat, Goshen in Elkhart County, IN just asked for a moretorium on allowing the outside burners...the ones that are wood burning boilers that set outside. He of course cited global warming. We hit 9 degrees today, and I love wood heat, and enjoy the smell of wood heat.

Anyway, it looks like you did pretty good there. And is a good time to take trees down and cut them up and stored while the ticks and other insects are frozen, so I figure you are not late, but right on time. If you have to cut it and/or gather it, now is cold but a good time for next years seasoned all the way up to about Spring when the ground starts to thaw and get mushy for tractor tires.

Mark