At best only maybe five more wheelbarrows of wood left. With restricted only 2 hours early morning fires; and after dark 3 hours evening fires . . . maybe 15 days at most.
Leaving 2-3 months of heating season left.
Oh well. We have two Grid powered electric mini-split heat pumps for this house.
What went wrong? Old age, lazy; and joints and muscles pains avoidance, I waited too long last year to get my 3 years now downed trees worked up. The inner core of the wood rounds then from previous months of winter rains then were still sinker-wood fully saturated wet. So in early season of October and November I was forced to 2X consumption still use it.
As I expected then: I would shortfall in the Spring.
Here is a new video just came up that is actually very comprehensive, and good:
As always, quite a bit biased for hardwoods.
Living in an actual rainforest with mostly conifer woods the bee-hive stacking is a no-no dumb-dumb. Single row drying stacking stretched out facing S, SW.
Then just before the Fall rainy season, for sure move into an actual wood shed with the open side facing NORTH. Our winter storms will blow rain mist sideways inside up to 20 feet from the south.
And again; temperate rain forest your fuel wood WILL have wood eating larvae bugs under the bark. Never, ever, stack again the sides of a wooden framed house!
Adapt to your actually conditions. And so long as you can in any way keep working up your own fuel wood you will have life.
Ha! Make younger friends to help you out later. Have daughters? Make sure they marry actual willing to help physically useful men. They will make the better husbands and fathers.
Steve Unruh
I’m in pretty much the same boat for wood supply. Thought what I had would last longer but it was a cold ass winter so far. We had enough of a thaw that I have been able to access a couple of standing dead trees I can cut up and pull on a plastic sled. unfortunately our 7 days of thaw didn’t get us to bare ground and we got another 6 inches the last two days. I will be burning some stuff that’s not fully seasoned. As soon as the snow leaves so do all the problems.
Today is chain maintenance day. I have some that my crappy hand filing have finally made nearly unusable so I’m going to touch them up on my bench grinder. What I’m curious about is what kind of service life others get out of various chain brands. For a long time I ran a Husqvarna saw and used their branded chains which I later found out were made by Oregon. My biggest issue with them was that they would eventually stretch beyond what my saw could tighten. Then I started using a Stihl almost exclusively and bought Stihl chains. By far the best chains I have used but much more expensive than most other brands. Chain stretch has never been a problem with them. Now I’m using Oregon chains mostly because of the price and on that basis they seem good enough. I’m curious about what off brands others have tried that they prefer.
I only used to buy Stihl chains but prices made me also look around so I have tried Oregons chains, Grimsholms chains and some no-name chains, the Oregons and Grimsholms are similar quality but the Stihl ones feels like they are the best.
Not sure if I have to mention the no-name one, there is no name to stand up for and it showed.
I also use the chains up completely, pretty much until there is at least a third of the teeth missing, I have only had a chain snap once (actually a Stihl chain) and that had only one sharpening on it.
I probably will buy more Oregon and Grimsholm in the future, they feel good enough for me, same thing on the chainsaw mill.
It is a Jonsered EL 600+. 5,5kW motor with an extra piece of rail so I can saw lengths of 8,3m or 27ft, the mill is somewhere around 30-40 years old.
Regarding pictures it’s dark here now but I rummaged through my phone and found these from a previous summer.
It is built so that it can be brought and set up where you would need the boards/beams but this one has stood here under roof on concrete blocks since new, holding up pretty good.
Push only, no feeding. Everything manual, no bells and whistles except for the chain drive.
I can make a video in spring/summer if you want
Looks wonderful Tone. What a difference. It’s been hovering between -25 and -5C for the last couple months here. Mostly around -15 and light snow every other day. I’ve been pushing myself to go clear up some trees knocked down by the storm and buried in snow almost every day off, but progress is slow.
We had a sunny day last week and I chunked the first batch of birch chunks this year. Went so-so since the limbs were frozen rock hard. Splitting is easy when frozen, but obviously not chunking.
They say we’re gonna get thaw now. I belive it when I see it.
Last load pallet wood. Super stuff. I think this is for next year and go back to conifers for the rest of the season. One load can serious overheat a 2,25 m3 buffer.
Well now the question is, ferret or ATV?
I can go home to the farm directly with the ATV, but I have to go many times and lift a little, ferret a few times but only out to the road?
That’s some nice-looking timber. Appears free of knots and such? If so, it’d be a shame to burn it for fuel, heating or driving. That looks like it wants to be dimensional lumber to me.
They are dry and have started to turn blue, so they won’t make good boards, and I need firewood.
Sadly, I have very little hardwood, so I both burn wood and drive my car with spruce and pine.
I have had surprisingly good results milling spruce that has dried standing, I did not want to cut 2” or more because of cracks but 1” boards for has been ok for me. Some of them still wants to be firewood after they have been through the sawmill and then I let them
I’m beat. Spent several days taking care of fallen timber in a steep hill. Managed to resque about 30 sawlogs from this spot. Meanwhile I could hear the forwarder in the distance moving 100s of m3 .
Tomorrow work-shifts start. Finally some rest
Went out and chopped some firewood yesterday, thinking about an electric motor instead of the tractor, how big does an electric motor need to be for the machine?
.
