The firewood is finished

This time of year, a critical fall chore in rural areas is to get firewood put up for the winter. In the Lewis household, this chore often falls on me since I don't mind splitting and stacking, and it frees Don up to do more complicated projects.

I started by assessing our woodshed in mid-August. This space was mostly empty and had accumulated a variety of things we tucked in to keep them out of the rain over the spring and summer, including the oversized canvas umbrella I used while picking blueberries.

Also – and crucially – in the woodshed was located the manual hydraulic log splitter. Our gas-powered log splitter had been stranded on the other side of the property with a flat (actually, destroyed) tire, so through late spring we had been using the manual splitter to split firewood.

Late last fall, we had ordered a few extra cords of firewood to supplement what we already had on hand, just in case it was needed to get us over the winter. As it turned out, the firewood was fairly green (not dry) and the splits were huge, far too large to fit into our stove. In short, the entire delivery would have to be resplit, and even then the wood was too green for effective use unless the stove was already very hot.

We tried to make the best of it by stacking some of the smaller pieces in the woodshed, but soon gave up. The wood pieces were simply too large and too green  to use. So the majority of the pile sat there, tarped but unstacked, all winter long. Over the summer we untarped the pile to let the wood dry out, which it did very nicely.

Now that I was tasked with firewood, the first thing I did was examine the wood that was already in the woodshed, much of which was too large to burn (but at least it was dried out).

I used the manual log splitter to split it down to size...

...then restacked everything. I concentrated on stacking everything as tightly as possible, and up to the absolute rafters.

Meanwhile we finally got a replacement tire on the (gas-powered) log splitter, so we towed it around to the front of the house, and I settled in to resplit the cords of firewood that had been drying out for the last year.

I kept the canvas umbrella in the woodshed, since at this point (late August) I was still harvesting blueberries and needed it for shade.

The blueberries finally petered out, so I moved the umbrella back into the barn and started stacking firewood in earnest.

Once the pile of wood was resplit and all stacked up, we started moving miscellaneous wood from the barn side of the house to the front where the log splitter was. These were rounds that had been harvested from dead trees we'd taken down.

We loaded these into a box Don built to go on the back of the tractor, and pulled them around to the log splitter.

This left me with plenty more wood to split.

Some of the rounds were enormous. These were the monsters we tried to tackle with the manual log splitter without success. The gas-powered splitter conquered them with very little effort.

As the weeks went by, I split and stacked everything I could lay my hands on. It was my goal to get that woodshed stuffed to the brim.

Row by row, I built up our supply.

However when everything we had on hand was split, we were well short of that goal of having a stuffed woodshed. So ... we ordered one more cord of rounds, just to fill in the gaps.

Splitting that last cord only took two or three days of working a couple hours at a time.

Second-to-last row...

As I wound down on the splitting, I was also playing a game with how much gas was left in the log splitter. I wanted to use it all up so we wouldn't have to drain the splitter before putting it away for the winter. But it was a fine balance, because I wanted to use that gas power to split the bigger rounds. So I pulled every remaining large round out of the pile...

...and carted them over to the splitter.

As it turned out, the gas in the splitter ran out just as I finished splitting the largest rounds. So I turned to the manual splitter to finish the batch.

And that was it for splitting.

I had an enormous pile of split wood needing to be stacked. The question was how much of it would fit into the shed. All? Most? Would there still be room in the shed?

I stacked and stacked. When each row reached the top of the shed, I played Tetris to see how many wood pieces I could shove into any available opening.

Almost finished...

Success! The woodshed is filled side to side, back to front, top to bottom. Based on the dimensions, Don calculates that we have almost five cords of wood, plenty to get us through even the harshest of winters. To me, a full woodshed is a thing of beauty.

There was a fair bit of leftover firewood. It took three loads in the Gorilla cart...

...and I stacked it on the back porch. This will be the first firewood we use this winter.

Now it was time for the cleanup. I had been tossing kindling-sized pieces into a pile...

...so I gathered them up and put them in a bin on the back porch for easy access.

I raked up the bark and other debris...

...and loaded it into the Gorilla cart. I pulled the cart into the pasture to dump it in a pile to be composted down. The cows instantly came to investigate. "Is it edible?"

This left the area in front of the woodshed nice and tidy. We'll tuck the log splitter away shortly.

The very last thing we'll do is hang a tarp loosely over the front of the woodshed to discourage rain and snow from blowing onto the wood. But for now – the firewood is finished!

Wood Cutting 101 by Husband of the Boss

Since we seem to be getting ready to start getting our firewood together for the soon-to-be-arriving winter (and to relieve the embarrassment of my VERY beautiful wife over her last post), I've decided to provide you all with my sage advice on wood cutting. It was published somewhere or other a couple of years ago. Hope it helps.
____________________________


One of the most basic and fundamental skills needed by anyone aspiring to a Country Lifestyle is that of the wood butcher or firewood cutter. Firewood and its timely gathering is of extreme importance not only in keeping a warm home, but also in showing your neighbors who you are.

Out here in Northern Idaho, most everyone uses wood heat, either as a secondary source or in many cases as the only means of keeping the house and shop warm during the cold nine months of the year. The correct display of your firewood is also important. A full wood shed, or stack upon stack of cut and split wood, tells your neighbors that you “get it.” You understand country living.

Now I can hear you out there, your whiney, smog-roughened voices crying out, “I want to be thought of that way, Don! I want to be a real woodsman!” Of course you do. And who wouldn’t? And as usual, I’m here to help. I promise that if you will heed the following words of wisdom, you too will be able to hold your head (or some other remaining appendage) up proudly in the presence of real woodsmen with country names like Stumpy, Lefty, or One-Eyed Pete.

First of all, let me dispel a couple of the old saws (get it? saws? Oh I’m good!) that you may have heard in your soon-to-be pre-country life. The most famous of the old sayings is undoubtedly “Heating with wood warms you twice,” referring not only to the burning but the cutting as well.

What nonsense. If you do it right, firewood will warm you at least six or seven times. By the time you’ve hauled your saw to the woods, realized that the chain is still dull from cutting all that roofing tin last year, gone back to the truck for a file, sharpened the saw while balancing it on an old stump, started cutting only to run out of gas (back to the truck for the can), realized that the log you are working on is either too heavy to turn (where’s the peavey?) or hollow and full of yellow jackets (a full-tilt run while shucking off all your clothing can be quite warming)…well, you’ve already got at least three or four good heats without even getting a stick into the truck. My friend and neighbor Percival Hughs claims that one time he got 27 warms out of a single batch of firewood, but he’s a professional and seasoned woodsman and therefore should not be trusted.

When should you start collecting firewood for the next year? Many of my friends start cutting firewood for the next year before they’ve even finished burning the current season’s supply. Others cut small amounts throughout the year, stacking their cords from youngest to oldest, then burning that wood in the same order, beginning with the oldest cut and therefore the driest wood.

Me? I usually begin cutting my winter’s firewood about two or three days after the first snow fall. Wait until your wife starts to complain about frost forming on the house plants or the dogs having to break through a crust of ice on the indoor water bowl. This delay adds a certain immediacy to the job that is quite bracing (see, another chance for a warming!). Unlike my lazy neighbors, I don’t mind doing concentrated, some might even say frenzied labor. After all, while they are all out lolly-gagging around, hunting elk or ice fishing, I can be found (sometimes with the aid of a search party) slogging though two or three feet of snow, trying to guess if the next mound of snow in my path is a downed tree or a hibernating bear.

So far you may have noticed that all we’ve talked about are logs that are already on the ground. While this is, in my opinion, their preferred state, occasionally dead or dying trees need to be helped to attain the horizontal.

Tree felling has been described as a difficult and dangerous profession requiring great skill and experience. But this is an exaggeration at best. After all, a tree is really nothing more than a vegetable; a multi-ton, 100-foot-high carrot, if you will. Since gravity and power tools are our friends in this endeavor, getting that carrot on the ground is not difficult. The trick is making sure that the tree falls where you want it to.

Old time tree-fallers (understandably rare) spend years learning to recognize the subtle “tells” of the tree: the asymmetrical growth, prevailing winds, root structure and the like. With this information and years of experience, they can put the tree on the ground within inches of where they will tell you afterwards that they meant for it to fall. If you have the time and no other visible means of support, this is an OK way to determine fall.

But if you’re in a hurry for a rosily glowing wood stove (because its 15 below zero, your hands are numb to the elbow, and the dogs are eying your ice fishing saw), there is a much faster way to determine where your future firewood will fall.

First, eye all possible ways that the tree could fall. Then make sure you have a “safe” line of retreat. Make your initial cuts in alignment with the direction you wish the tree to fall. Make your fall, and prepare to start cutting firewood.

This process will be made much easier by the fact that your truck will now be acting (to the best of its ability) as a sawhorse under the newly fallen tree. I don't know what it is; a tree can be leaning 45 degrees from the horizontal and will make a 180 sweep while falling to land on a truck. Possibly some kind of magnetism; but please note: when I say “your truck,” of course I mean “not my truck.” My truck was unaccountably un-start-able just before I went to cut firewood, necessitating the borrowing of your truck.

Since most country folk never bother to take their keys out of their vehicles when they park them, the available supply of borrow-able vehicles is only limited by the distance to the next neighbor’s house. (Other limitations will present themselves after your first wood cutting foray, but we will cover those in a later chapter concerning life-threatening wounds and their treatment.)

Now some of you who are “less country savvy” may be thinking, “Isn’t that a lot like stealing, Don?” Ha ha, well of course it would be if you didn’t write a note to leave with your neighbor, explaining in suitably vague terms the emergency that necessitated the borrowing the truck.

Caution: Remember to leave the note in a place where your neighbor can find it. It won’t do any good if you just drop it out the window of the truck as you drive away, or leave it stuck in the screen door where a blast of wind might carry it off. I like to leave my notes on the dash board of the borrowed vehicle.

Remember, after getting your firewood in, make sure to return the borrowed vehicle promptly even if that requires a tow truck. You might even get it back before your neighbor knows it was borrowed. If this occurs, you can remove the note from the dash board. After all, why confuse the poor fellow? However if your neighbor is waiting for you, possibly with the new shotgun he really wants to demonstrate, make sure that you are ready to explain to him the many benefits he has gained in loaning you his vehicle, like the lower wind resistance and the decreased insurance costs that the reduced profile of his truck now provides.

This might be a good time to address some of the equipment you will need for firewood gathering.

Aside from someone else’s truck, you’ll want a good chain saw. Unfortunately, no one has ever created such a thing. Oh, there are lots of great chain saws, but they always belong to someone else. Ask any woodsman about his chain saw and be prepared for a love story that would make Casanova blush. THEIR chain saw starts up first time on a below zero morning, cuts eight cords of firewood on a single tank of gas, then comes home and wakes their owner gently with a fresh-brewed cup of coffee. MY chain saw, no matter how new or expensive, won’t start unless it is first warmed to room temperature (that’s normal room temperature, not my room temperature, because I still haven’t cut any fire wood).

Simply owning a chainsaw, whether operating or not, is not enough of course. You will also need chainsaw files for sharpening the saw after you cut into the nails you put into the tree the previous year during that unfortunate episode while constructing the kid’s tree house. (Honestly, who thinks about wind resistance when installing a slide?) Anyway, you will need a good selection of files, each of a specific diameter to fit all of the possible chain sizes available, except of course for the chain you currently have on your saw.

Sharpening a chain is an art. The saw must be balanced and braced so that each draw of the file sharpens each tooth at the same angle and to the same depth. Or so the guys down at the saw shop always tell me after they stop laughing. Personally, I think it’s just an attempt to get more business.

I happen to be an expert at sharpening a chain. Many professionals are willing to settle for a chain that will cut quickly and straight. But I’ve raised the “bar,” as it were, and all of my saw cuts now form perfect arcs through the wood, with the blade sometimes even coming out again on the same side of the log that it went in. This will come in very handy if I ever get around to building a log cabin.

Another tool that’s very handy to have with you is the peavey, a spike and hook arrangement on the end of a stout pole, not to be confused with the neighbor whose truck you borrowed. The peavey is very useful for rolling those heavy logs over onto your feet. I don’t think that was the original design concept, but that’s what it always does to me.

You may be thinking to yourself, “Now why would I want a tool like that?” Shame on you. Wood cutting is not simply about avoiding death by freezing; it’s also a lifestyle display. Having a peavey in the back of your truck when you arrive for your Loyal Order of the Grouse Lodge meeting shows the guys that you are one of them.

Well, that’s all the time I have for now. In our next lesson on firewood collection, I’ll cover other items of interest for the new country-o-phile. Such topics will include: “The Steel -Toed Boot: Essential Safety Apparel or Single Use Shear?”, “Small Engine Fires,” and the real health benefits of cooler home temperatures.

But before I go, let me leave you with this thought. A dead standing tree is not a diabolical, evil, and malevolent creature bent on your destruction (that’s a cow). And nine times out of ten that tree will not try to kill you. So don’t worry. But never fall more than nine trees at a time.