Very impressive stacks. I wondered what in the heck you planned to do with it all if you only burn 4 cords a year, then I saw the last picture : ) Hope you don’t have to hand split all that.
Very impressive stacks. I wondered what in the heck you planned to do with it all if you only burn 4 cords a year, then I saw the last picture : ) Hope you don’t have to hand split all that.
Yes, every single stick is hand split by myself. No one else touches it from tree to stove.
Quads- you should spread those piles out a bit more and rent out the field for paintballing! You’re already 3/4 the way to making a wooden fortress there.
With 500 acres and that many stacks, do you use GPS to locate them? Very impressive.
Perhaps a couple pictures of my woodpiles would help explain why I don’t do any fancy covering or elevating:
The front yard:
The back yard:
Piled over there:
And over there:
Oops, she won’t let me put any more in the yard:
And out in the woods here:
Woods here:
Woods there:
A little in this spot:
Some there:
And of course out there:
As you can see, on the 500+ acres where I cut wood, I have it all over in various states of “seasoning”. If I were to buy lumber to put under all of my piles, then buy tarps to put on top of all my piles, then do it every year for the last 40 or so, oh my. I burn wood because I can’t afford to burn anything else. I won’t be blowing money on those kinds of accessories anytime soon. Starts to make filling the LP tank look attractive again!
Don’t get me wrong though, I can certainly understand why people cover, elevate, and otherwise coddle their firewood. If I was in the position to be able to do that, and had a small/single pile in the yard, I would too. Heck I’d even build a trophy case around it! C’mon, it’s just firewood, around here it grows on trees!
Thank you all for the compliments! I enjoy sharing photos of my woodpiles/hard work (actually, I enjoy the hard work too, splitting is my favorite part), and I like taking pictures. I always have my camera with me and shoot everything I see. Deer, turkeys, flowers, weeds, planes, birds, woodpiles, you name it!
Paintballing is a cool idea. I’ve never tried it, but while deer hunting, when on drives, the standers often hide behind the woodpiles.
I’ve got a network of trails in the woods and I stack the wood near them. That way I can find the firewood when I need to and load it up on my little trailer behind my ATV.
I stack instead of piling because the wood in the middle of a pile doesn’t seem to season very well. In a stack it all seems to season pretty evenly. Sometimes it’s years before I haul it up out of the woods. That way when I need it, it’s ready to burn, even though it just came out of the woods.
Cutting firewood is a big part of my life. I love it! I’m out there all year long, in between milking the cows. I cut wood for my family and friends too. Plus I sell some, mostly to campers. The grocery store sells bundles of pine slab wood, about a big handful or equivalent of two or three splits, for $5. When the campers see how much good oak they can get from me for $25 they rush right over. Especially now that it’s a law in WI that you can’t haul firewood for more than 50 miles.
quads, I’m surprised you would do all this work, bucking, splitting, stacking, storing for years and leave them on the ground.
I think elevating off the ground is probably the single most important part of the seasoning procedure. I would like to see a moisuture meter on the splits, from top to bottom from one year to the next.
Elevating off the ground indeed is good and I doubt anyone would argue with it. However, there is some of our wood that is stacked directly on the ground and we’ve done this for years. The reason it works is where we stack. It is on high ground and nothing but sand. Water goes through sand like **** through a tin horn.
The only bad thing we find is that some of the wood will bury itself right into the ground but that is no problem. In the spring, we then tap them with a maul and they pop right out. Those are then thrown on top of another stack to be burned later. Reason? They aren’t seasoned! But it is just the bottom layer and not all of it. Some can be burned right then. And if you’ve seen any of my posts, I probably have close to the amount of wood that quads has. At last count it was 23 cords.
Elevating off the ground indeed is good and I doubt anyone would argue with it. However, there is some of our wood that is stacked directly on the ground and we’ve done this for years. The reason it works is where we stack. It is on high ground and nothing but sand. Water goes through sand like **** through a tin horn.
The only bad thing we find is that some of the wood will bury itself right into the ground but that is no problem. In the spring, we then tap them with a maul and they pop right out. Those are then thrown on top of another stack to be burned later. Reason? They aren’t seasoned! But it is just the bottom layer and not all of it. Some can be burned right then. And if you’ve seen any of my posts, I probably have close to the amount of wood that quads has. At last count it was 23 cords.
Yes, that’s about the same situation/conditions as me. We live in the part of WI called the Central Sands, it’s all pure sand and I live on high ground. My bigger piles have also been stacked in the same place for many years, so have a layer of bark, wood chips, etc. under them. But that’s right, all of the wood isn’t touching the ground like some of the worry-warts would seem to imply, only the bottom (sacrificial) layer. Everything above the bottom is elevated, just like everybody else.
23 cord is a good bunch of wood. I’ve never precisely measured all of mine, but I would say there’s that much or more at any given time.
Nice….I kind the idea of multiple piles of wood here and there Quad. You must have 100 cords or so drying. We pile our wood and I suppose you’re right about the wood underneath and in the center taking longer to season but once you’re a few years ahead it doesn’t matter. As far ahead as you are now I bet you could save yourself many hours of labor piling some wood up. Piles don’t blow over and you can pile way higher than you can stack…split wood that is not rounds.
Thanks savageactor7. I don’t think I have that many cord around, but I’ve got plenty. Depending on how much I sell or give away, I’m 4 or more years ahead. If I keep every stick of it for myself, then I’m probably twice that many years ahead. I burn about 4 or so cord per year in the stove, and maybe another cord in my resting place firepit.
quads, with our 23-24 cords we are at least 7 years up on the wood. But like you, we might sell some and also give some away. When we put in the new soapstone stove, our fuel needs dropped dramatically and now we use only 3 cords per year instead of the 6-7 cords we used to burn.
That’s a good feeling to know that your house will be heated for that many years in the future, with no, or very little, cost! When people talk to me about how much the price of LP gas is, or how much it cost them to heat their house last winter, I tell them that it cost me $2.89 to heat my house for the winter. Their eyes get big and they say “WHAT?!?!?” Then I tell them that I can cut a year’s worth of firewood with about one gallon of gasoline in the saw. Therefore, I heat my home with one gallon of gasoline every winter!
That’s a good feeling to know that your house will be heated for that many years in the future, with no, or very little, cost! When people talk to me about how much the price of LP gas is, or how much it cost them to heat their house last winter, I tell them that it cost me $2.89 to heat my house for the winter. Their eyes get big and they say “WHAT?!?!?” Then I tell them that I can cut a year’s worth of word with about one gallon of gasoline in the saw. Therefore, I heat my home with one gallon of gasoline every winter!
Hey, what kind of wood stove you have anyway, nice pics BTW.
Bravo
