Up-Date on Wood Working Progress

We ARE making progress, aren't we? We've been working on our winter's wood supply since early this spring and we're just now getting close to having the first wood shed full.

Couple more rows to stack and we can call it full up.

Here's all that's left for Roy to finish cutting of the twelve cords of maple wood we had delivered.

You mean to say we got all twelve cords in this one wood shed?

Nope, there's still a huge pile of "too big" logs that we have to split before they can be stacked under cover.

And we have three full racks of night time wood, big logs that we put in the stove before going to bed at night. One of these big honkers will burn all night long, keep the house warm and cozy, and still provide glowing coals in the morning to make it easy to start the fire back up when we get up.

The idea of having two wood sheds is so that we always have one in reserve. Ideally, we'll go into this fall with both sheds full. This winter we'll empty one shed, but the other one will be full of seasoned wood and ready for the fall of 2010. Summer of 2010, we'll fill the shed we emptied this coming winter.

So then why is this second shed still empty right now? Why isn't it full of wood from last summer? Long story. Let's just say we chalk it up to unusual circumstances, but hopefully once we're back on top of things by this fall, it won't happen again. Two sheds to fill in one summer season is (ooof, ugh, ouch, moan, groan) too much. (And cuts into my hammock time drastically.)

Just outside of the empty shed, we have this big pile of (mostly) birch that Roy has been harvesting. It's from dead standing trees on the property that needed to come down. It'll work up fast but we won't put it in the wood shed until near the very front so that we can use it first for fall fires. Some of it is a little punky and we won't get as much heat out of it as the more solid, better wood which we'll need when it gets really cold.

This is the pile of what will be our supply of kindling wood for several years. These old slabwood boards have been in this stack for years and even though technically not under cover, they have had some protection from the trees near them and are well seasoned.

Our ten-plus acres of woods are full of dead standing birch that need to be harvested and would provide us with all the wood we need for our lifetime. The difficulty enters in when we try to figure out a time-efficient way of getting the wood from a distance away to the wood storage area. What is needed is a four-wheeled tractor and strategically placed roads through our woods. (Our little homestead lacks both tractor and roads, but as soon as we win the lottery . . . ) It can be done with snowmobile and sled in the winter, but even that is too time consuming to be realistically feasible.

Gotta stop writing and get outside as I just heard Roy fire up the wood splitter. It's not raining at the moment, but I have no doubt it will start again some time today. Ya gotta split wood while the sun shines. Okay, so there's not really any sun shining but at least there's no moisture falling from the sky at the moment!