Very nice score today!

I get 3-7 cords per week from a friend of mine who has his own tree company, plenty of Doug fir and other softwoods as that is what is around here mostly but today I got 2 full cords of beautiful Elm (should have been used for lumber in my opinion). This stuff is hard but splits so easy compared to Doug Fir. Actualy it does not split it just cracks. The rounds bulk of them were over 3' in diameter. I will post some picks as soon as I dump it out ouf my dump trailer. My total now for winter of '08 and 5yrs beyond is 15 cords which I have collected in the last 4 weeks. I am stoked this elm though, I can tell will take at least 2yrs to dry. I bet it is going to burn great, the hardest wood I have ever burned is maple and this stuff is way harder and denser. Its going a long 2 yr wait it will be nice when it comes. I also have 2 cords of oak to pick up monday which I have never burned. The next few years are looking great. Its good to have friends in the tree business.

savageactor7 said:

Nice take whphel, I burn elm all the time and am sure you can burn it next fall if you get it split soon and let mother nature work its magic. By next fall it'll be black on the cut ends and you will feel the difference in weight.

...just say'en the elm around here is some of the toughest wood I split. ...wouldn't even think of taking a maul to it, save it for the splitter. It's also on the the few woods that I'll cut down to the size of my wrist or smaller...same with apple and cherry too.

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It had been felled just hours prior to my pick up. I had to split it right thereat the pick up site, some of the rounds were just over 3'across so they had to be split and all I had was 2 mauls and 2 wedges but the bedges are useless on that stuff if you can get a wedge in it ist allready split.

Yeah it was 3' and we split it by hand. When I first saw it I sait to my buddy boy I sure hope we can split this stuff. But sure enough it was pretty darn easy actualy. Hell it was harder to carry the heavy splits to the trailer than it was to split it. I would compair splitting elm to splitting a very hard cedar (but ceadar is easyer to split).

Here is a pick of what I staked up yesterday first picture and a few of my other wood piles the pic on the right is a 21'x12'x6.5' cube of fir and hard maple(Just short of 13 cords right there alone).

I did not have room for more pic's in my last post but here is a nice pile of Cedar.

sixminus1 said:

Great score! It's my first year of serious firewood collecting, and I must say that I envy your 5-year plan

I called nearly every tree service in my area, and every last one of them keeps the trees and sells them for firewood. I'll continue to try to negotiate with them to get their unsplit cuts dropped in the front yard.

My next door neighbor (also a new woodburner) is a construction guy, so he has lots of job sites where we can score good trees. As a matter of fact, today we're driving about 50 miles with a cargo van and a pickup truck to get what we can get from one of his sites. The cargo van rental was $50 for the day, with unlimited mileage. If we can get away with more than 2 cords of wood (which is very likely), it will be worth the driving and effort.

I'm hoping to be cutting and splitting all day tomorrow! Wish me luck!

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Well how did it go?