How much?

NJ State Parks have a Homeowner Firewood Program. My local State Park has tons of trees they want removed (most downed in a storm a couple years ago), so I paid my $25 for a cord, but they're giving me three truck loads as a cord. Pretty sure I'm getting well over a cord. Not that it matters much, $25 isn't much to pay for a cord, even if I have to buck and split it. The trees were limbed, cut into 8+ foot lengths, and dropped in a couple areas in the park. It was drive up, cute them to length, and load them.

How much do you think I have so far? The wood in the truck is my second trip, the wood on the ground (plus a couple rounds that rolled off to the left in the pic) is from the first trip. I'm doing another trip on Wednesday morning, which miight end up a little smaller than these loads. I think it must be near 1.5 cords when I'm done. Keep in mind it's a 6.5' bed on my truck. Yellow lab for scale.

KindredSpiritzz said:

dogs saying he ain't splitting all that wood, no way no how.

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Yeah, he's usually pretty disappointed when I bring out the chainsaw or the maul. My 7-year old son, however, sets the rounds up and pretends they're giants. I'm the giant slayer with my maul, apparently. Soon enough, he'll become the giant slayer. He cuts kindling now and then, under supervision.

Seanm said:

I remember using a cord calculator on my short box dodge awhile ago and figured that if I had it stacked and peaked toward the center without side rails I was getting just under .4 of a cord.

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mustash29 said:

Roughly 6.5 x 5 x 3 is about 3/4 cord. I'd say about 1/2 cord per load though. Those big rounds have a lot of air space between them.

Slicing 3 loads of rounds off a pile like you mentioned is a good deal for that price.

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Yeah, sounds about right to me.

BobUrban said:

only thing that is absolutely certain is you got a lot of bang for your buck if you don't have to travel very far. Get yourself a big trailer and take all the 25$ cords they will give you!!

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blacktail said:

I'd say that's better than most opportunities for the price. If even somewhat close to home it's a winner. I can easily spend that much $$$ in gas getting "free" firewood.

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Definitely a good opportunity at 10 miles each way. Hopefully I'll get back in there for a couple more cords this winter; time doesn't permit me taking several days in a row to collect wood, unfortunately, and no chance on a trailer this year. Building my wood empire slowly here, and the first addition would probably be a better saw than my 36cc Craftsman (not that I'm complaining, it cuts surprisingly well with the 1/2 chisel I use on it).

The wood's been down a while now and some of it is clearly going back to the earth, so I would like to get as much as they'll let me take this year.

Yeah it's a great program, and I did an online search after driving by the park and seeing huge amounts of dead, down, trees. I was going to call either way, but then I found the program. No safety courses needed here, they just tell you where the piles are and how many loads you can take for the $25 fee. After getting a load, you stop back in at the park office, they take a peek at what you have, mark down how many loads you have left on your permit, then send you on your way. I'll get one more load tomorrow morning to round out my first "cord"; if I had a bigger saw I could get some really enormous, solid oak rounds. They limited the cutting to three people yesterday, and I managed to find piles that I could cut by myself; I like working alone. I talked with the ranger for a bit, and he's not sure if they'll do the program next year. He thinks the wood is going to start rotting after this year, and although there's still lots of wood they want to remove from the forest, the forresters need to come mark the trees and they're apparently otherwise occupied. So I need to get what I can this year. I have another county or town park I'm going to contact, where my son played Little League, where I've seen lots of downed oak that I want to get my hands on if it's still there; I saw it last Spring.

I hand split all my wood but my wife and kids are champs at stacking. Yes, I picked those rounds up and put them into the truck. I did stand a large round right behind the tailgate so that I could lift them in two steps if I needed to. I think it helped with a couple big ones. My back felt pretty good afterwards, but I do have some tricep tendinitis that flares up when I do this type of work. After a course of Ibuprofen I'm good. But I'm only 33.

Wow that's cool. What a tree, and at 78, very impressive.

I'm in Salem County, Parvin State Park is the park I'm hitting.

General info on the program:
http://www.state.nj.us/dep/parksandforests/forest/njfs_firewood_prog.html

This park near you? Might be worth a call: http://www.state.nj.us/dep/parksandforests/parks/allaire.html

Got my third load of wood this morning to round out my first "cord". Could really use a bigger saw, it's taking me forever to get a load if I take any of the big stuff, which is what most of the good oak is.

It's worth a call though. I thought I'd have to fell and haul logs from the woods, but they were all piled up in 8+ foot length, no limbs, ready to buck and load at Parvin.

Yeah I need a new (or good used) saw but the budget is pretty inflexible at the moment. I'm just going to keep complaining about it for now.