Well I've read and seen pictures of how Quads and many others out East get there wood, so I decided to post my own thread of our first wood gathering outing of the year out here in BC. Rather than just post pictures I made a little video of our outing since I had recorded some video with my camera anyway.
The first step was to secure a BC Firewood permit which is easy to obtain simply by downloading the PDF file on this web site. BC Firewood permit The purpose of that permit is mostly to make people aware of the rules of cutting firewood on crown land, the permit itself cost nothing.
After getting lunch and all the necessary equipment loaded into the truck we drove the 30 km. (18 miles) up the Ashnola river to a place where there are plenty of dead standing Lodgepole Pine and picked a small grove of dead trees and started cutting. I cut the trees down one at a time and try to get them to overlap each other and limb them after they are on the ground, but before bucking them into rounds. By limbing right away and overlapping them it makes bucking them up much easier because they are up off the ground (the top ones anyway).
Fortunately I have two young Woodsmen to help me load the rounds into the truck, so the whole process goes along pretty quickly. We even had time to get some pictures and video of a little bird that didn't seem to be afraid of us, in fact at one point I was afraid he was going to land on my chainsaw while I was cutting.
I checked the wood with my moisture meter an it was between 5% and 25% (as usual), which is pretty much what I expected as these beetle killed Pine dry out quite nicely around here after a few years. The wood is ready to burn and I'll be burning it this winter. That is one of the advantages of burning this Lodgepole pine, that and the long straight trunks make for easy cutting with no twisted or crotched wood pieces to deal with.
Near the end of the video you'll see 3 big logs that someone, probably from the parks department, cut down and wrote "free wood" on so people would come and cut it up and take it away. I might try cutting some of that up next time we head up there.
The first step was to secure a BC Firewood permit which is easy to obtain simply by downloading the PDF file on this web site. BC Firewood permit The purpose of that permit is mostly to make people aware of the rules of cutting firewood on crown land, the permit itself cost nothing.
After getting lunch and all the necessary equipment loaded into the truck we drove the 30 km. (18 miles) up the Ashnola river to a place where there are plenty of dead standing Lodgepole Pine and picked a small grove of dead trees and started cutting. I cut the trees down one at a time and try to get them to overlap each other and limb them after they are on the ground, but before bucking them into rounds. By limbing right away and overlapping them it makes bucking them up much easier because they are up off the ground (the top ones anyway).
Fortunately I have two young Woodsmen to help me load the rounds into the truck, so the whole process goes along pretty quickly. We even had time to get some pictures and video of a little bird that didn't seem to be afraid of us, in fact at one point I was afraid he was going to land on my chainsaw while I was cutting.
I checked the wood with my moisture meter an it was between 5% and 25% (as usual), which is pretty much what I expected as these beetle killed Pine dry out quite nicely around here after a few years. The wood is ready to burn and I'll be burning it this winter. That is one of the advantages of burning this Lodgepole pine, that and the long straight trunks make for easy cutting with no twisted or crotched wood pieces to deal with.
Near the end of the video you'll see 3 big logs that someone, probably from the parks department, cut down and wrote "free wood" on so people would come and cut it up and take it away. I might try cutting some of that up next time we head up there.
