How We Get Our Firewood

maybe you all just have them small trees and gotta use a lot..i mean i only cut 7 trees to get 6 cord or something like that...

The property has already been cut/thinned out in the past. Its fairly open in there and for the most part all that's left are the massive oaks. If I was able to cut 7 of these it would set me up for 2+ years. They're big boys.

I just don't see them letting me take 7 at once.

I would sure like get my wood hungry hands on some oak..we dont see much of it around ,,Im thinking about planting some in the spring for the next generation of wood barons to own my soap stone when I go to the big wood pile in the sky... ..ZZZim

This has been some interesting reading on this post...can one of you guys recommend a chain saw that would be safe to be operated by a 140 lb woman?

kmdesautelle said:

This has been some interesting reading on this post...can one of you guys recommend a chain saw that would be safe to be operated by a 140 lb woman?

Click to expand...

I would recommend someone showing you how to use a saw safely first and then buy a Dolmar 5100 s with a 18 inch bar with 3/8 chain. I ran mine again today and its the best saw I have ever run for weight and balance.

Shipper

When I moved into my home had a huge Maple tree cut down for fear it would fall on the house. Saved it all. 48" diameter at the base. Still have 2 cords split & stacked. Gave away nearly a cord to a friend and huge splitting blocks to several other friends and still have some large rounds waiting to be split and stacked. It'll be a while before I have to "buy" firewood.

I buy log length, had near 5 cord on the last load, 4.7 to be exact, and paid 320 american dollars for it.

I got a scroungin' habit too ya know, plus a couple acres I cut off of.

I live on Long Island NY. Not many wood burners around here so there's is not much competition. I listen for chainsaws, tell friends, follow tree guys. I stack all my wood on plastic pallets and that works out real well. I have about 6 cords split and about 3 cords in rounds. This is my first year with a stove. I've been burning in fireplace for years. Can't wait.

Found this forum last winter. First time posting though
Defintely a scrounger, proud of it. Most from neighbors, getting large trees cut, Or drag smaller stuff back from my walk to mailbox. Live here in city Been wood burning for almost 15 years So very experience is wood hauling and picking up.
Other people look up qwhen walking, I look down.LOL always on lookout for wood esp kindling. LOL
Junk pickup is every 3 months and Im a addict. I scrounge old furniture etc break or cut it up. I even scrounge old garbage cans people throw away and store in them too. I prob have 12 garbage cans
Now we had STRONG winds last Sunday the worst electric outage in our city
and its a woodburning dream. Plenty still out there. Lots of folks still in the dark with power off. fortunately it didnt affect my street.
I did take out the car several times and filled the trunk prob 10 times. Mostly maple though. Found some oak. guy down the street cut a wild cherry limb for neighbor. Nice looking wood there.
Hubby cut most to length. Still need to split the bigger stuff. Too hot in the 80s during the day
Im not too poplar cause my front yad is full of cut up logs waiting to be stacked in the backyard. Too bad Ill do some every day till they are done
Do have some lattice screens in front of my 4 small covered wood"cribs" or sheds I made some covers out of remnant "sunbrella" fabric and some nice brass grommets . Im a sewist too Need to make two more covers.
Scrounged some old fibergass roof panels from house in back, when they remodeled. Hoping Hubby helps me enclose the center of my woodshed with those large pieces
Ill prob scrounge again tomorrow. before the city picks up the countless tree limbs
Gotta MAKE hay while the sun shines. right guys. ?I bought me a cordless rec saw . Also use my 12 inch bandsaw to cut smaller stuff to lengths. Im kind of scared of the chainsaw. . Gonna order some mor good hearing protectors and another pair of chaps.
Hubby finally built some more sawbucks From my junk pickup find.From old cedar extension ladder. I drug home three months ago from several blocks away curb .I made several trips and shifted arms
Not bad for an "Older gal" and 125 pounds weight. Love the challenge and exercise. Just gotta remember to keep back straight and hold in stomach and lift with legs. right guys? Plus grew up poor
I hope to do all of this for years yet. But wish Hubby would try build some solar stuff. Less wear on the lungs...... Just not as good keeping fire going in stove as Hubby is.
wish I bought a diff model stove ....Ah well
Now thinking about an electric splitter Keep the gas one at Lake house Then we dont have to bring back and forth
love reading on forums. I learn a lot
Take care all

I should have posted my little pic here rather that start a thread on another forum. My wood comes from felled trees here on the farm.

This is a picture of the mess I am working on now.

Never pay

I'm probably 50-50 purchased cut and split versus my own cutting and splitting. I have a surgically-repaired back that cannot or will not (I'm not going to force the issue) keep up with my 10-12 pick-up per winter habit, so I rely on a number of local cutters who deliver right to the shed to make up the difference from what I cut on several local farms/woodlots.

jeanw said:

Found this forum last winter. First time posting though
Defintely a scrounger, proud of it.

Click to expand...

Welcome, jeanw. You are definitely a great scrounger and a hands on kind of person. Good on ya, as the Aussies say. I like to do some of those construction projects like your woodshed roof and such. I love to recycle stuff. Lately I'm getting a small steady supply of mostly 2 by 4 wood, also some other good sizes. I plan to build a woodshed out of it. And it truly is a scroungers sort of thing, as the wood is used and needs to have some nails and staples pulled as I bring it in. So I know where you are coming from. Breaks my heart to see good stuff go to the dump. Must be the influence of my parents, who lived through the 1920-30's depression.

I'll put it this way, I haven't bought any wood yet. Knock on my free wood.

I get log truck loads from work. The price is right too. FREE

Last tree I got was an Ash that a co-worker needed a limb cut up that came across onto his property. I asked him to ask the person who owned the land if we could take down the whole tree so that it wouldn't happen with other limbs (not true, but it sounded reasonable). I scored a 24+ tree out of that one. I'm hoping to get a few more of these so that I can keep up with the burn from this year. I'm guessing it was close to a cord total. Have open land next to my parents that has some very good oaks on it that I may start thinning next spring for a few more.

I've bought a cord of wood once. I crashed a snowmobile bad one new years and was laid up with 4 broken ribs and a wrecked wrist. Hopefully I'll never to that again.
I have a good mix of scrounge and harvest. Right now I'm just pulling dead trees out of my wood lot, so does that make scrounging or harvesting?

All of my wood has come from the property of friends that live within a mile of me. My best source is a good frien that lives a half mile down the road. He has eleven acres and has been clearing some of it for trails and a river view. He gave me about 5 cords for this season and we'll start on next season's real soon. We usually cut it into eight foot lengths and pile it on the forks of his Tractor and he dumps it in the yard for me. The wood consists of Ash, Cherry, Honeylocust, Osage Orange and a little Hackberry. There's another guy I know that lives about a mile from me that's about to have 50 trees logged from his land. I'll be sure to snag some of that. They've also logged the ridge behind my house and left a lot of tops up there. I need to get in touch with the owner before I take any though. I own three acres and have about an acre of young hardwood mostly. My Ash trees average about 6". I cut the dead standing that I have, but I won't touch any live stuff until every last wood resource runs out.
I'd burn honeysuckle before I'd pay for wood...Sycamore even.

This will be my first year burning since I hauled wood in as a kid for Mom & Dad back in the 80's. We have a two acre lot that is 1/3 woods. I currently have 1 cord put up and am working on the second. I'll only burn on weekends this year to get back into the swing of it. Being on this site is like getting bit by the burn bug. I have probably 3-4 cords or more of wood that just needs to be cleaned up off of the ground.

Just scored a huge pile of seasoned poplar and hemlock (I think) on Craig's list - right near my house - all bucked just needs to be split..........looks like a cord or maybe two - plan to get over there this weekend with trailer to retrieve - is it worth it?

Llamaman - poplar is not that great but it seasons fast and you can mix it in with the hemlock. The hemlock is pretty good stuff so take that first.

I scrounge all my wood from family , friends, CL and a couple tree services. One of the tree guys even drops it off at the house , the others I take thetrailer out to the job site and they help load it up by hand so it's all a semi reasonable size. The guy that drops it off has a big grapple loader so he has some huge pieces.

I am pretty lucky to have "cheap" sources of wood but they often include driving a little ways.

I live near quite a bit of national forest land. You can purchase a cutting permit for $20 that allows you to take 4 truck loads or 2 cords. But it would be about 15 miles (or 10 miles down a weaving, winding country road) to the nearest area to cut.

I also work on a 63,000 acre wooded military base that allows firewood cutting for $10/load (no limit on load size as far as I know). The worst part about this is that it requires a partner. I know it's not a bad idea to have a partner but that means I pretty much have to make a special trip (20 miles one way) with my wife along, or find somebody else that works here to cut with me as my partner. Neither of those options have worked out so far, but I'm hoping to find a cutting partner.

Llamaman said:

Just scored a huge pile of seasoned poplar and hemlock (I think) on Craig's list - right near my house - all bucked just needs to be split..........looks like a cord or maybe two - plan to get over there this weekend with trailer to retrieve - is it worth it?

Click to expand...

Wow . . zombie thread . . . it's alive . . . it's alive! (Running in panic.)

Kidding aside . . . in my own opinion neither hemlock or poplar are especially good or desirable woods for burning . . . poplar is a "soft" hardwood and hemlock is a "hard" softwood . . . neither one will compare to oak, sugar maple, beech, locust, etc. . . . but that said . . . if the wood is free . . . and even bucked up already . . . and near your house . . . free wood is good wood . . . and once seasoned it will keep you just as warm as the more desirable wood . . . you might need to reload a little more often . . . but in my opinion that's not a huge drawback.

I cut 100% of my extended family's wood needs from our family farm. We have cut in our woods, 48 acres, for the past forty years. We harvest between 5 and 7 full cords of wood annually.

I have become a wood snob. I have plenty of soft wood on my land but I only want Oak. In addition to that I want someone else to buck it and deliver it to me for free. If I lived somewhere else this would not be possible but around here I really don't have a problem with that. It cost the tree services $40 to take their load to the dump plus gas and time. My land is closer and free.