it's laying down, seasoned--now I've got to get it to the house

[snowleopard]

Walked the property today--3.5 acres of wooded hillside. Most of it is poplar, 50-60' tall. Lots of trees down in one section especially. Took a hatchet along and did some thunking, and while some of it is mush, most of it is still ringing like a bell--managed to land in a semi-elevated position.

The land slopes down and is bounded by a highway on the bottom, and I was trying to figure out how to get the wood to the road where I can throw it in my truck and bring it back around up to the house. I had initially planned on dragging it in 9' lengths to the road (this is very dry stuff), but it's a poke. I think the answer might be to cut it to rounds, stack it, wait until there's snow on the ground, and pull it to the road by sled. It's slower than bringing it down the way I'd first hoped, but it's do-able that way.

I'm pretty sure there's 5-6 cords there that is useable, if not more. I want this to mix with my birch for the quick heat, and use ot for shoulder burns. I am just a little flummoxed about how to get it. I don't have anything like a quad or snowmachine or winch for moving it, so have to figure this out.

Another concern is that there is some standing dead stuff that has bark split all the way up the trunk, that looks ready to come down, but the trees are thick enough to where they're going to make that tricky. And there are a few pick-up-sticks tangles involving 4-6 trees. The six-tree one looked untangleable, but the other is more of a muddle--and right in the heart of some thick scavenging. I'm wondering if I would be wiser to try to drop that stuff before I attempted to work in the area.

Want to get moving on this before the trees leaf out, which will make it harder to see what I've got up there.

Any ideas, suggestions?

Someone also offered me a log cabin that they want torn down. Sounds like the roof is off already. I will go up to their place when their driveway is a little less muddy and see what that looks like. She said it was big spruce logs, and that I'd be able to drive up to it. It sounds like a summer of a lot of work, should be a productive one.

 

[Woody Stover]

I don't have anything like a quad or snowmachine or winch for moving it, so have to figure this out.

Before the quad, we used a wheelbarrow. We took a tow strap and hooked both ends to the axle, forming a long loop. One person got inside the loop and pulled, draft-horse style, and the other picked up the wheelbarrow handles and steered/pushed. It was a tough uphill slog, but at least you'd be pulling Poplar, not wet Red Oak like we were.
:shut:

Someone also offered me a log cabin that they want torn down. She said it was big spruce logs

The logs aren't treated with any type of preservative, are they? I don't think you'd want to burn that...

 

[snowleopard]

Before the quad, we used a wheelbarrow. We took a tow strap and hooked both ends to the axle, forming a long loop. One person got inside the loop and pulled, draft-horse style, and the other picked up the wheelbarrow handles and steered/pushed. It was a tough uphill slog, but at least you'd be pulling Poplar, not wet Red Oak like we were.
:shut:
Thank you for sharing this. I have to favor one of my knees, unfortunately, so I am limited when it comes to the brute-force approach.

Yep, I was standing out there looking at that wood and wondering why I hadn't thought to have six sons. Strong ones. I was talking to my 16-year-old about this, and he said, "Don't worry about it. I'll take care of it." We'll see.

Someone also offered me a log cabin that they want torn down. She said it was big spruce logs

The logs aren't treated with any type of preservative, are they? I don't think you'd want to burn that...

Hmmm, good point. I'll have to ask about that. Thanks.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Snow, that also was my first concern; did they use a preservative on those logs? If so, leave it be.

How big is that popple? The reason I ask is because one time, a long, long time ago, when my kids were teenagers, we had to cut some popple and we could not get too close to it. So I cut it into 4' lengths for them and into 6-7' lengths for me. Believe it or not, if you stand them on end and then get right up to where the top is against your shoulder, really close to your body, you can put them up on your shoulder quite easy. You bend both knees to set low, wrap your one arm around the log and use the other hand for guidance as needed when lifting. Then stand up straight and as you do, swing the butt end of the log out. You may have to slide the log one way or another but it is not that hard to do if the weight isn't too much. It really is easier than the description! Of course if it is too big to set on your shoulder, that idea is out. And they also can get pretty heavy before you reach the truck! A little practice and you can determine how much you can carry but you will be surprised to find that you may be able to carry more weight than you think doing it this way.

On the other hand, if too heavy, do you have a toboggan? Maybe even one of those plastic models? They really don't slide that bad in the woods. Of course the wheelbarrow can also be good and we've done that several times with both single wheel and 2-wheeled cart. Back to the sliding, a rope or a couple of ropes tied to a log and then one or two people doing the pulling; sort of like two men dragging out a deer.

If you cut and stack in the woods, will you have to be concerned with possible theives?

 

[willworkforwood]

.... I had initially planned on dragging it in 9' lengths to the road (this is very dry stuff), but it's a poke. I think the answer might be to cut it to rounds, stack it, wait until there's snow on the ground, and pull it to the road by sled. ....

I move all my wood (~ 8 cord/year) by wheelbarrow. This includes moving rounds/half-rounds over distances up to 500' - I trade my time for the cost of a mechanical hauler. One nice thing about a single-wheel wheelbarrow is that it doesn't need much of a path to go - just a few inches. And those paths can easily zigzag around stumps, rocks, etc. So, unless you have really undulated or broken ground, there should be no reason you couldn't use one to do this work. If the issue is mud/wet ground, you can overlap 8" wide strips of 1/2" plywood to bridge the messy patches. Sure, an ATV would haul wood much faster and easier than a WB. But if the alternative for you is a sled in the Winter, then I think you would be much better off using a WB now. Consider what might happen to your knee if your leg slips out while pulling the sled :-/ . You can do a small-medium WB load without much effort, and little risk of injury. BTW, I'm 62, 5'8", and 150lb, which shows that this work doesn't require brute force. Just load what you can do comfortably, and make more trips. In any case, good luck with it!

 

[fredarm]

+1 on the plastic toboggan. That's what I use to get wood out of the woods. It slides nicely over the low brush and makes its own path after a couple of passes.

 

[snowleopard]

Thank you, Dennis, Willwork and Fred.

The PO left stacks of rounds on the property--pretty old, some great, some of it was worthless. I had `Move wood closer to the house' on my chore list last fall--unfortunately, that was the weekend that it snowed. And it wasn't just a nice little lubrication dusting, it was "Is this where you wanted eight inches of the wet, sloppy stuff? Okay, boys, back the truck up . . . " As a result, I spent the rest of the winter pulling in wood (some of it uphill over some terrain that seemed really challenging at first) via sled, with help from Teenthing2 (and TT1 when she was home from college). Now that the snow is gone, I'm pulling in the cut rounds that were buried too deep to get to, or that I lost track of, and using my plastic utility sled. Works pretty well.

Dennis, thanks for the on-the-shoulder hint. I'd forgotten about that approach. The biggest ones I saw out there that were sound was 12"--most of the stuff is more in the 6" range. I saw one old granddaddy stump out there--nothing left of it but the stump, and it had gone down many, many years ago. They clear-cut these hills about a hundred years ago for the paddlewheelers and the gold mine industry, so these are all second growth. Must have been something when the hills were full of the mature growth here.

Anyway. I thank you for the reminder about the preservatives. Is that a stay-away-completely-no-matter-what thing? Or are there things I should watch out for, and others that aren't a problem? I'm thinking that if they put log oil on the exterior 15 years ago, that's a different matter than if it's been freshly shellacked. Am I off base here?

As far as wood thieves go, the neighbor to the west cut and stacked rounds when they cleared. Their property and mine is fenced by these piles. Their piles would be a lot more inviting--easy to see, and only cleared ground to move them through. I can't imagine thieves wanting to work as hard as they would for this stuff. I'm a lot more concerned about my birch up by the house--that's something that is a lot more desirable in the eyes of wood thieves, and easier to drive to, at the moment. Will probably stack it more out-of-the-way as I get it worked up (I know, Dennis, I know-- but TT2 has one week of school left, and we've got to get him through finals. Then we'll hit it.)

The biggest issue with this terrain is the fact that it's on hillside, and that there are a lot of brambles and some uneven terrain. It was actually easier to move through the woods with the snow, because I was moving over all that.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Well, once you get those kids through college.....they are gone! Enjoy all the time you can with them now and you will cherish the memories. Soon they will have their own families....but then after that you will get to spoil their children.

 

[Wood Duck]

I agree with dennis - depending on the diameter of the log, you can balance 4 or 5 foot section on your shoulder and simply walk it out. I have moved lots of firewood this way. Rather than spend time winching, dragging the cable back for another log, untangling the cable, etc., you spend all your time hauling wood and get a surprising amount of wood moved.

I personally don't worry about working near leaning dead trees as long as the weather is not too windy. There have been a few times I have avoided a particularly precarious looking leaner, but most of them have been standing a long time and I figure they'll continue to stand. I do avoid working near leaning dead trees in high wind.

 

[snowleopard]

Thanks for this advice. I think that this is the route we'll take. We had a mighty storm here a few months back--40-50 MPH winds, so I guess if they were going to come down easily, that would have brought them down.