How do you get to your firewood?

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Bwhunter85

Feeling the Heat
Hearth Supporter
Aug 21, 2010
259
Sunfield, MI
Have a lot of dead fall in the woods. The problem I'm having is getting close enough to it with the truck. Looks like I will have to start cutting an access trail, which means a lot more work, but should pay off in the end.
 
Have a lot of dead fall in the woods. The problem I'm having is getting close enough to it with the truck. Looks like I will have to start cutting an access trail, which means a lot more work, but should pay off in the end.

How do you get to your firewood?

Any way I can. Scrounging, foraging, stealing, poaching and encroaching. I've picked up utility line trimmings as well as utility poles lying along the road. Old rail ties as well as new rail ties. Cut it all up and put it in the wood shed. When the wood shed goes empty, I've been known to tunnel over to my neighbors wood shed; underground and under cover of darkness. It's a jungle in these parts. Dog eat Dog. Manly
 
ATV.

With saws on the front rack. Axe wedges straps whatever in a box on the back rack.

Trailer & splitter following along hooked to the back of it.

Can do a lot of damage in tight spaces with that setup. :)
 
How do you get to your firewood?

Any way I can. Scrounging, foraging, stealing, poaching and encroaching. I've picked up utility line trimmings as well as utility poles lying along the road. Old rail ties as well as new rail ties. Cut it all up and put it in the wood shed. When the wood shed goes empty, I've been known to tunnel over to my neighbors wood shed; underground and under cover of darkness. It's a jungle in these parts. Dog eat Dog. Manly


Manly,
You don't really burn ties and poles do you? Are you an OWB owner?
 
I started off with my atv and ohio steel dump cart, this approach worked very well (and still does for woods scrounging) I have also upgraded to a compact tractor with back hoe and front bucket attachments, The ability to pick up a 25ft log and cut the whole thing while off the ground has made life and my back much happier.
 
If I can’t fit a tractor or truck in where it’s at I use a Kubota RTV


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Most of my wood cutting is in rocky areas with laurel,wild blueberry and any other kinda of small sucky brush you can think of. I bought a cub cadet 1250 hydro w/chains n a ohio steel dump cart. I might have 400 bucks tied up between them.
It sucks when you have 22 horse kioti wwd w/bucket n it too big to get in where you need to be! What's funny (kinda) for every load I bring out its almost always x2 cause I end up upsetting it at least once...lol
 
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I skid it all out with a Ford tractor, then winch it onto my trailer for hauling home.

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I can usually get my truck into to where I need to go..I like backing right up to big tree tops and loading the truck up....if I am working a logging operation...which is most of the time....I skid logs to a clean staging area to cut them up....if I am working the edges of a large field scrounging for small dead elm I park the truck and dump trailer somewhere in the middle and run the atv and trailer back and forth till its full....about 8 trips....if I want it it comes home with me! I have a 12K winch on my Dodge and I have been known to winch logs up out of ravines that are premium...
 
The trails I made out back are not all that straight and wind around lots of trees so pulling out with the BX does not work. So I picked up a winch and 100’ of rope cable and just winch the logs out of the woods to the trails. Then I can buck them up to trailer out.
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I get all my wood from my uncles farm. He lives just outside of town and has a 35 to 40 acre woods plus a couple of smaller woods and trees along a river and fence lines. LOTS of trees! I can't keep up with the dead and dying and I cut for myself and my uncle.

I use an ATV (Honda fourtrax) and a 4 by 8 trailer to take it out of the woods and to the barnyard where I split and stack it. I then haul loads to town to my house as needed using my wife's minivan and the same trailer.

If they are really big logs, I'll usemy uncle's loader.
 
Manually, every last bit of it. But I think the most I've harvested is a couple of cords in a season, and all of it within walking distance of my house. Some was easy--throw it in a wheelbarrow and push it across a fairly level part of the yard. Some was hard--put it on a dolly and pull it up out of a steep creekbed. Some of it had to be split before I could budge it. But that's part of the fun, isn't it? _g
 
1977 sears 16/6 weighted and chained with a dump cart behind pulls 75% of what i burn out of our woods. Cut and bucked in the woods and then hauled to the splitter beside the stacks. The other 25% comes from scrounges or cutting for family and friends which needs to be truck accessible for me to commit.
 
Then I can buck them up to trailer out.
Those white rocks are awfully clean, do you put a tarp under the splitter when splitting to catch the wood crumbs?
 
The trails I made out back are not all that straight and wind around lots of trees so pulling out with the BX does not work.

I just cut down the trees in my way, and skid them out with the target tree. The more, the merrier.
 
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Those white rocks are awfully clean, do you put a tarp under the splitter when splitting to catch the wood crumbs?

Not rocks but quahog shells 840’ of them. I did split over them a few times before I learned to put a tarp down first.
:rolleyes:
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I just cut down the trees in my way, and skid them out with the target tree. The more, the merrier.


Yup me to but The trails are also for Jane and friends to walk the woods and they complained that I was making them to straight so they now wind back and forth for a few miles.
 
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We use a
2015 kubota tractor with enclose cab and forkes
2014 bobcat T590 trac machine with enclosed cab, bucket and grapple
2016 f550 4x4 6.7L diesel dump and a 20' 12K dual axle trailer
This will pull the wood out nicely with comfort.. the kids like the stereo and heat.. my 9 yr old thinks hes da man when he operates this stuff..
 
If I can pull up to it . . . pick up.

If not . . . Yamaha ATV.
 
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I drop them with my 55’ man lift. Load them into my truck with an excavator, them haul them to my splitter in my F550. Throw it all in a big pile throughout the summer then stack for winter.
 
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ATV set up with 5 saws, two splitting mauls, two cable pullers, straps, clevises, cables, chains, gas, bar oil, safety gear, etc........

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