May not need a chainsaw or splitter again

Just found wood 2 miles from my house cut split Oak and Hickory 30 $ a pickup load.

Not bad but free is better so dont sell that splitter just yet. Im gonna tell my nieghbor im paying $20.00 bucks a truck load ( red oak n ash) because I really dont need it we'll see how he takes it.

I found some guys selling oak and ash $135-$150 a cord so I ordered a couple just to fatten up my pile, still love doing it myself for free but hard to turn that down.

That is a good deal. At those prices it's hard to go crazy cutting your wood. I found a guy who delivers to my house all hardwood split for $100/ cord. It's hard for me to justify working so hard for a scrounge when I can get wood for so cheap. Free is best, but at that price it makes it a lot easier to pass up a scrounge I don't really have the time for.

Don't get me wrong if I see a good scrounge I'm on it. Plus I really enjoy splitting and stacking wood. So at this point I guess I'm buying half and scrounging half.

I think there is value in buying wood sometimes. Dont get me wrong, I am only 43 and love scrounging wood and doing the cutting/splitting myself, but if you buy a bit here and there from a guy, odds are better he'll still be in business for you when you tweek a knee or your back and HAVE TO BUY some. Maybe you'll never need it, but I find a little security in have an established relationship with supplier like that. Plus wood like oak isn't easy to come by in NE Kansas. Lots of elm and hedge...white oak not so much.

i hear ya.

but just a note on FREE wood:

my 'free' wood isn't free. gear maintenence, fuel, manual labor and TIME are the price i pay for it. free would be cut, split, delivered and stacked with no strings attached. as you said most of us enjoy the work anyway.

It is only fair to view it as free if you really enjoy doing it. I am there.

With Hedge around, who wants Oak?

Was gonna say the same thing

Just make sure you buy it well ahead of time so it has time to dry. If it were me doing that, I'd keep on cutting and leave that boughten wood for 3 years before starting to burn it.

I spent 360$ and 6 hrs this weekend and I'm done for the 20012-2013 season. It all cut, splitt, and stacked.

12 loads? Not bad, six hours work for a years supply of wood.

I love to burn hedge but I can be a bugger to harvest. Seems like it fights you are at every turn. Every limb wants to cling to the four around it. If your working a a solid patch you can cut a big limb or even a tree and it just stands there supported byall the crown around. I've been clearing a wood lot (165 acres) across the street from me for 2 years. Once we opened a clearing, we started using Kubota 34hp compact tractor to pull out the cut pieces, and drag them to the open clearing for cutting. The land- owner wanted all the crowns burn as we went so dragging limbs/crown over to a burning pile was always part of it. The landowner wanted the stumps cut flush to the ground so we would save sticking the saw in the dirt till the end of a cutting day. Plus, if any readers aren't familar with hedge, it usually contains thorns, that if you get stuck withone, it makes you swell up and stays sore for three days. Now that I read this maybe I'm grousing too hard, I mean the lot I've been cutting tons of great burning hedge is real close at 300 yads away, but then you see guys working on oak - no thorns, falls when you cut it, huge trunks full of cords of beautiful straigh grain wood, and I guess the grass starts looking a little greener.

I cut and process my own wood because I enjoy doing it. When you think about doing it all yourself, its actually heating you four times.....once when you cut it, once when you split it, once when you stack it, and finally when it warms your whole family. I'll keep doing it myself til I can't do it anymore.

Well I dont cut my own wood but it still warms me a lot, I find the scrounge, 3 good ones recently, bust a nut getting it into the truck, push it out into the driveway, decide its much better wood than the silver already waiting to be split so I move it to the back of the shed where it can sit and it looks like I have more room, seems like I move each piece of wood upwards of 15 times anymore before it is tossed in the furnace. Logistically speaking firewood is the most complicated part of my life LOL.