Collecting firewood this winter
I said I would have the barn filled up with firewood, but easier said than done. We go through it so fast heating three buildings we are constantly going out to collect more. I guess this is life in the country during the winter, or at least it is for me. I am glad, it gives me something to do when the plants and fields are not growing. But wow its a constant struggle having enough firewood if I choose not to use the heat strips or propane. But feels good heating the house using a fuel I can just collect from the forest and with the right amount of drying its good to go.
This time of year I am spending a few hours a day collecting wood for the furnace when the weather is okay to work in. With temperatures in the 10s and 20s fahrenheit we are going through wood faster now. At one point we ran out of seasoned wood and that was not very fun, so we plan on stocking up the barn the best we can.
The barn will let the wood dry out and become what is known as “seasoned” wood. This means its dry enough to burn at its best. Wet wood may not burn as hot so its best not to use unseasoned wood that is just cut (green) or soggy wood.
As we go through the piles by the furnace we restock that area and then add the rest to the barn.
All those annual wildflowers I had around my green house and sheds have died, but the stalks make a very good fire starter kindling.
Looking closer we can see how its all soft hollow wood which burns fast and hot.
We make a few different piles by the wood furnace, so we have the right wood when we need to refuel it. Depending on the coals inside at the time we may use little wood to start it again or just throw in large logs when the coals are hot enough to just reignite it.
Luckily I have help moving all this wood, my partner helps me out and my foreman also helps me move the wood around the farm.
Usually the way it goes is my foreman cuts up the logs and then me and my partner move them.
Some of them are just too big and need to be cut down more.
I bought a splitter to try to get these a little smaller, as they are just massive even when cut into thin rounds.
We load up what we can in the UTV and move it over to the barn.
Speaking of the barn, the barn cat came out and my partner had to smother it in love for a minute before we continued.
Another late afternoon cutting up more logs with my foreman. At this point the chainsaws need to be sharpened just about every two weeks.
I start loading up my truck with another load of firewood, its small now but soon it will be overflowing from the bed of the truck.. lol
Once I have enough we load up the UTV and we both drive back to the homestead. On the back roads with find an near infinite amount of downed trees to collect firewood from.. But its all soggy and wet, so it needs to dry in the barn for awhile.
I follow my foreman up the hill and we unload the firewood. It should get us a few more days. Our goal is to fill up the barn with enough wood for many months, but it seems to be a lot harder than I thought. I guess we are in the middle of winter now, so it seems at least half the wood we collect just goes right to the furnace for use. And the other half usually gets stored in the barn for seasoning.
Boss you are doing an amazing job. How i wish i live close to you i will love to come and help you. How do you see about that?
Thanks man, appreciate the offer but I already have enough help here.
I feel confident that you will get it dialed in to the point that you are staying two to three years ahead on the firewood.
I think so too, well maybe two or three years worth I need more space. But if we can cut enough for a year that would be a great start.
@solominer Yep, it will take a while but you will get there. Again, I have to say that black locust is your best option because of its BTU output... but I would not burn a whole load of it at once in the outdoor furnace because it has been known to melt whatever it is burned in. I have never heard of it melting one of those units but it will assuredly do it to a traditional woodstove.
Yep I am watching out for it. If I can get some I will use it... The wood furnace is designed to get over 1000f inside so I think it will be fine.
@solominer If you can find a good tree trimming service (arborist) in the area they will often have dump truck loads of wood (of all kinds) that they just want to dump somewhere because it is cheaper than processing it into mulch or firewood.
I used to know a guy that would buy these big chunks of wood from the local pallet maker. They were relatively cheap because they were just scraps for them, but they burned pretty long and slow. This was before the outdoor furnaces were so popular, so we just used it in the wood stove. I drove out ot Wisconsin with my buddy a year or two ago and picked up a wood splitter from a company near Chippewa Falls. It was a pretty cool piece of equipment.
Oh cool, I recently bought some wood as we were out of the seasoned stuff. It was all split up using a splitter. I really like the wood being cut up like that so it burns better.
I just bought a stand version of a splitter, waiting for it to get here now... hopefully it will work well. If not I may buy one of those hydraulic ones.
That sounds cool. I hope it works out well for you!
Thats awesome man. I would love to have a homestead like this one day. I bet it feels great at the end of the day when you look back on everything you have accomplished.
I hope you get yours too one day, yeah it does feel good. Every day of work I put in this place makes it better and I love it.
It is very true that this place needs a lot of dry firewood for daily chores. It is a hard task dear @solominer but it must be done because it is so important. You are optimistic and you will achieve it, besides in your daily chores dry firewood is vital. Thank you for your visits to my publications. I wish you success in your hard work in your field.
Yeah indeed I do need a lot of it.. so I need to focus on that as it is important.
You are doing a great job to keep all the interior units in a warm and suitable climate, for that you have to make a great effort searching and accumulating firewood to cure, luckily you have help from your foreman and equipment that allows you to move logs heavy.
Congratulations dear friend @solominer you are doing a great job
have a beautiful afternoon
Indeed its helpful to have this machinery and help otherwise it would be a lot harder work.
Hope have a good afternoon too.
It's definitely not fun staying out of firewood in the middle of winter! I remember one winter when it was so cold that I burned almost 3 times more than the winter before!
Btw. Is that the cat that got the brand-new escape box 2-3 weeks ago? :) I had a similar gray cat and it was crazy active, attacking people on the street... lol...
It sure is not fun, oh man I feel ya. On the colder days we indeed seem to go through wood faster. I am curious this summer when I run the furnace just to heat our water heaters how little we will use.
Yep that is the cat.. hehe well sounds like the same as this one. She always runs up on our legs and trys to grab them. Or run out in front of us and get in our way.. .
Actually, it's pure physics... You need more energy to warm up the (colder) environment... But, it is amazing how a lot can burn the same furnace on cold days... 😃
LOL! I can't believe that you are describing EXACTLY the same behavior as my cat... lol... We had many cats, but none of them was crazy like the gray cat... 😃 (btw. I found somewhere that its breed name is Russian Blue Cat)
You' re are really organized 🤓
Thanks, I try to be..
These are such big pieced definitely need to be cut down....this reminded me of my village where the people used to carry heavy bundle of wooden pieces collected from the jungle and carrying them home. The females were more master in it. I tried to put them on my head once but it was not easy
Yeah we need to split some of them. I got a tool on the way that may make that easier.
Oh cool, yeah I can imagine that is something that needs to be done regularly.. Hah I have seen people carrying stuff on their head but never tried.. lol
Those bundles were pretty heavy.. I tried it once took a toll on neck...May be I share some picture soon
!WOC
Fantastic job, Woc by @solominer! kairke(6/8) is truly impressed by the dedication and effort you invested in creating this post. Keep up the outstanding work!
This post is wonderful! You deserve this gift of 0.3 WGOLD from @kairke. Keep up the exceptional work!
BTW! WGOLD is the token of the War of Clans ecosystem, you can use it to have discounts in all our games or stake it and earn rewards now!
Awesome!!!
So much to do.. winter, spring, summer, fall...
Yeah we stay busy here.. and doing work depending on the seasons.
Spring is coming up and soon we will start new plants, and get to cut our first harvest of the fields hopefully in May.
Lots of work is good for the soul, my friend!!!
Rest up well at the end of the day and take care of yourself.
!LUV
solominer, silversaver888 sent you LUV. 🙂 (8/10) tools | trade | connect | daily
Made with LUV by crrdlx.
Thanks for saying something educational ®©
Love 🥰 you .
Happy New Year and Devoted Salaam Assalamu Alaikum I really notice your every post or I read very important your posts are so beautiful or you present very nice step by step I learn a lot from your posts that your Please, I try to arrange the posts, one thing I want to say, you are my teacher, I follow you constantly, thank you for such a beautiful post, I hope that I will get support from you in the future and I am waiting for your support. Be well and be healthy.thank you so much ❣️ @solominer
Ah glad to write about my experiences on this farm.
I hope you 💖 always support me ... Love you 💞❤️❤️ so much
I used to help my father collecting wood and getting it ready before the winter was kicking in. But sadly or not winter is not the same as it was 10 or 20 years ago. Hence why we only had a bit of snow for around 2 or 3 days only. It's true that we did face cold temperatures but again, not as they used to be so I guess we won on one side not consuming that much wood anymore, but lost on the side of not being able to enjoy the season as we did when we were kids :/
This is all new to me collecting firewood, so I guess I will really notice the seasons more this way. Depending how cold it gets is how much wood we need. It has got quite cold here already.. But winter has only begun here so lots of time to see how that all changes.
Hopefully we get some snow here, all we have had is a dusting in the last year. So really want to see more of it.
Keeping my fingers crossed for you 🤞🏼
I can imagine how much work it must be to keep three buildings warm during the winter. But at least you're getting some exercise and fresh air, right? And it's great that you're able to use fuel that you can collect from the forest. It's great that you have the barn too to make it easier to keep them dry and seasoned.
Yeah it is good exercise that is for sure. And I do enjoy being outside while collecting the firewood when the weather is nice.
The barn is a nice feature, it came with the house so its great I am putting it to use.
Wow. That's amazing 😍
Great activity, dry twigs are quite good for firewood.
Yeah man it keeps me busy.. So true. Sometimes my twigs get wet and they get hard to light. So keeping them dry is key.
Is a never ending process.. like laundry
Greetings from México!!!!!