JimboM said:
~*~vvv~*~ said:
In the sixties when I delivered feed back in the hills and hollars, some of the old timers had wood piles like beehives. I was more interested in their granddaughters than in wood piles at that time. Now I wish I had asked why they did that. The woodpiles that is.
I could easily set up a horizontal/vertical test. Any suggestions about what else to test at the same time? Results in two years folks. Don't hold your breath.
The "beehive" is a holz hausen, correct? I've been reading that will dry out green wood in three months? I'm skeptical of that. Do not want to hijack here, but anyone have any experience with that stacking technique?
Those wood piles in holz hausen pictures look too good. Seems to me in my dim memory the piles were bark on the outside. I have never heard of holz hausen or seen any stacks that nice around here. Now, I have to find out. There were a lot of slabs in the old days. Maybe what I remember was slabs leaning up against wood piles. But that don't make sense.
My grandparents had three piles. The pile they were burning, the pile they would burn next year, and the pile they were making this year. They didn't stack, just made a big pile. Wood did everything. Heat, cook, and make hot water. At some point in the fifties, the aunts and uncles went together and built them an addition with a bathroom, hot/cold running water, indoor plumbing, and a gas stove in the kitchen. As I recall, PaPa was agin it, but the kids backed him down because they were tired of Grandma having to deal with wood and pumping water. There was a water pump in the kitchen right at the sink. So his opinion was that was as good as running water from an electric well.
It was a nice house that he had built with his own hands and raised a big family. To him it was perfect with an outhouse and hand pump water. When they got out of farming and moved to town, they got a TV. He turned it on and told me that the people on there lived in the TV all the time. Then he turned it off and back on and said see, there they are again. At the time I was to young to know that PaPa had dementia. Fortunately, there are hundreds of fantastic memories of him on the farm as we often spent days following him around and helping as we could. As was common, they raised everything. He had tractors, but preferred Don and Bob for cultivating the corn. We would ride on the cultivator with him and he would say to watch the horses feet - that they would never step on a plant. He was right. Even at the end of the rows, they would step around and rassel that big cultivator in to position and never crush a plant. Used to fascinate us. Four of the six aunts and uncles died from the complication of Alzheimer. Only my mother and her sister escaped. Big reason why I retired young. Didn't know if I was going to have an old age. So far so good.
So far so good.
