Wasted fuel/ firewood

Always make me sad to see 10 to 12 inch diameter wood being fed into a chipper - A jobsite foreman told me years ago though, he was sick & tired of peoples promises to have the wood gone - Their crew would show up, there were logs all over the site. His answer was the Blu Ox chipper they bought - Problem solved.

You probably wouldn't like to see this product http://www.airburners.com/. Their market is out west where there is an incredible volume of beetle killed wood and heavy fire danger. The wood was filling up landfills and they were doing open burns which are real dirty. The burn box burns it a lot cleaner and the resulting ash takes up less space. There was a company offering a small electric generator that captured a bit of power but mostly the goal is to cut landfill volume.

Seems to be more and more piles of wood like that in farmers fields around here. Only a few of them cut the wood up for firewood.

That is how I obtain a lot of the wood I burn. Farmers have figured out that they can increase yield if they take out the trees along fence rows that shade their crop. They use heavy equipment and just pile it up and burn it. Some take a small fraction of the wood but they can't take all of it.

I try to get as much as I can, but I can't even come close to keeping pace with the heavy equipment. I don't like it but that is just the way it is. I am just glad the farmers I know let me cut as much as I want/can.

The problem I have now is someplace to store it close by my house. I keep ~1 cord stacked behind my barn, but I live in a residential neighborhood. I have 6 cord at my parents house and another 3 cord at my in-laws. I hide the stacks in different locations around the property to try and keep there houses from looking like firewood lots.

The other issue I have is splitting it all. Sometimes I cut them into 4' logs and haul and dump them off. Other times I cut rounds. I split by hand but think a hydraulic would be faster. The problem I have is A) Splitters are expensive and B) I like splitting by hand for exercise (my cross-fit buddies wonder how I am able to rack off pull-ups) and think a hydro may make me lazy.

Only trees piled like that in my area are when farmers "prune" or rip out whole hedge rows with an excavator. They pile HEDGE in piles and burn it, then till it under.

trees aren't fuel until a lot of energy and labor is invested.

I'm no stranger to push down piles, and I'm in my glory if they've been pushed down right for easy access. Nothing like backing up to an old pile and going home to throw it in the stove. Had one such pile 150 meters away, probably pulled 1.5 cord off it, I picked it over really good.

It's a shame when piles get pushed over by a clueless operator though, and the piles made would have a beaver envious of how packed the dirt is between logs.

There was an area about a mile from me that just got cleared (40 by 50 meter area roughly), and the rm must have had a monkey operating the equipment. There's really no way to salvage the wood....it's that bad.

Yup makes me sick! Not as common here in western WI but do see some time to time. I would love to take advantage of piles like that! Felling is fun, limbing and brushing is the real work for me. Most people want it stacked in a burn pile or hauled away in exchange for the wood. I would love to hen pick piles like these and not have to mess with limbs and brush.

gerry100 said:

trees aren't fuel until a lot of energy and labor is invested.

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Oil isn't fuel until it is refined. Then purchased.

Sign me up for processing wood.

Ever time I see a tree downed, and it remains laying on the ground for months, I get bothered. And I see it daily. Some clown down the street from me has a pile of rounds, probably about 150 in total, just stacked on his property line and they are slowly decomposing. Makes me sick to my stomach. I live on the biggest mountain in SE Pa, and I would say at least half of us burn. But some grumpy misanthropes would rather let the wood rot on their property than help out their neighbors.

Never underestimate the misery and anger of your fellow humans.

That is a shame to see pics like that. But like firefighter938 said even if you stumble upon a score like these most people can't keep up. Four or five years ago a buddy of mine worked a job for a Christmas tree farm where he had to clear 10 plus acres. I ended up getting three tri axel dump truck loads and that didn't even put a dent in it. Most was just mass burned. Very sad

Same thing going on around here too, the big farmers buying up small farms and clearing every tree and every fencerow out. Usually the big farmers have their own excavators and/or bulldozers. Sick for an environmentalist/nature lover like me to see not to mention the loss of fine firewood. It is usually hard to get in on this type of wood scourging because the farmers are in a hurry and can make a huge brushpile in a day or so. I guess if you are in tight with them you could get them to set aside some tree trunks.
To the original poster hate to see those brushpiles in south Dakota the pheasant capitol of the world. Haven't heard but sure they are losing habitat not only to farmer clearing but doing away with CPR land. Decades down the road if present practices keep going small game will be rare to nonexistent in many parts of the country

Hickorynut said:

To the original poster hate to see those brushpiles in south Dakota the pheasant capitol of the world. Haven't heard but sure they are losing habitat not only to farmer clearing but doing away with CPR land. Decades down the road if present practices keep going small game will be rare to nonexistent in many parts of the country

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As an avid upland hunter we've seen the same thing here! All the CPR land has been pulled out of the program. And every hedgerow has been thinned or removed completely. Only place left to hunt around here is state or federal land, and very limited amount of prarie lands and drainage furrows/areas on private lands.

GRRRRRR! Piles like that make me envious!

It's not really about how a state views wood, but about costs vs. value.

Somebody has to be willing to pay or invest the effort to move the wood to where it can be used. Otherwise, the people getting rid of it choose the lowest cost method they can.

Out in our area, when land is being cleared for development, most of it seems to get chipped into hog fuel, but I know a pretty good proportion of that hog fuel gets used either as mulch or as fuel for industrial boilers. The local transfer station also accepts unpainted wood waste for a significant discount compared to their regular dump fees, because they also chip it to hog fuel.

Out in the timberlands, waste still frequently gets burned to reduce the fire risk and clear the land enough for replanting, because nobody will come collect it. That's almost all branches and tops less than 6" in diameter. I'm sure the timber companies would love to have somebody collect it, because piling and burning it is a labor cost for them.

as the D.C. population grows and folks occupy the regional countryside, more and more acres of forest just go up in smoke to make clearing for residential areas. sad but true. i stopped and asked about it one day and they said nope, cant have any....what aint going into logs is being chipped.

Those are all bug trees. My understanding is, there trying to stop the bug spread by burning the dead trees. But the bugs are only in the live wood.

Have any of you guys ever cleared land before? You end up with tons of sticks, limbs, rotten stumps and roots that you really can't do anything with without a great deal of effort.

I have huge burn piles on my property from clearing land. It is all of the smaller tree tops. I CSS the trunks and anything under 3" goes on the burn pile. It isn't worth my time to sit and break up sticks.