we drank this as kids. http://tacticalintelligence.net/blog/how-to-make-survival-sumac-lemonade.htm
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The berries are nice, at least the kind with red berries.
Don’t mess with the white berries. That suemack is poisonous. The red is safe red is what i have here. But it will spread like crazy.
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Yes Al I remember making tea from it as a kid too.Good stuff.
The sumac with the white berries is poison sumac, and that crap is nasty, you don’t even want to burn it. In fact it might be illegal here to burn it, because you can get deathly sick from the smoke. It only grows in really wet marshy areas.
The red berried sumac is good for bees, butterflies and birds and will grow on nutrient poor soils. IIRC it forms a canopy to get trees established.
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Hi Tom, Yes Mr. Dolittle has 2 friends here now. All rescues.
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Lots of interesting response guys, thanks. Could it be Mimosa?
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Where did they get the curly tails? One of my rescues has a curly tail can’t put a finger on where it came from.
I don’t really need any chunked wood right now but the edging from 2 inch lumber was hard to pass up 
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Man that looks nice today it is snowing here again I can’t wait to see green grass again.
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The grass isn’t entirely green here, but over the last few days it’s like someone threw a switch, we’ve gone from late winter to late spring over a few days. Sunday it was plus 14 up on my land, honey bees were making exploratory flights, while the snow was still melting. Plus 20 forecast for Friday.
I spent the weekend making a very small dent in my wood supply.
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In the next couple of years you’ll have an endless supply of perfect gasifier fuel in that lot. Long, straight 2 inch material 
Watch out for those tall stumps. They could stall a tank 
Edit: Do you always split and stack on site?
With which tool do you split your 4 foot wood?
Jo, in this case I went about things unconventionally. I am clearing an old field that was reverting to forest. I wanted to get it down, being the primary objective, so with limited time I dropped all the trees in the same direction. For the same reason I left the stumps extra long, to be able to push or pull them out with the tractor or small bulldozer. Normally when cutting for wood I would process it all as I dropped it, and cut the stumps quite close to the ground. I also originally wanted to pull the logs in tree length to a landing, but I wanted to get as much split as possible while it was still frozen.
I do prefer to split and stack where the wood is cut, so much easier to move it in summer or fall when dry, it will weigh half as much. I expect split small it will be dry by mid summer.
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Thierry, in the second picture you can see my splitting axe on the side. It’s a Fiskars axe, about 4lbs, which is the nicest splitting axe I have used, good steel and balance. I wonder how the hollow carbon fiber handle will hold up over time.
The wood in the picture is 32", I am preparing it to fit inside a barrel charcoal retort, also why it is split so small. It is black poplar (Balsam poplar / balm of Gilead) I believe it is common in northern Europe also. Here it isn’t valued as firewood, but it was in my way, and splits very well when frozen. The trembling aspen (white poplar) I cut in the same stand I am cutting and splitting in 4ft lengths. Depending on how hard the wood is to split, 32" may be better, as it still divides into standard 16" fire wood.
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Those Fiskars are the best. I have had mine for about 10 years. I use hydraulics for most of my splitting but have use one of them a lot splits about the same as a 15 pound mall. But is way easier to swing.
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HWWT ( have wood will travel )
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Your wood chunk processing is on a whole different scale
I come back into the house for a sit down cup of coffee after making 4 or 5 buckets full!
That is a beautiful sight
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Have you already chosen a model of stove in particular?
I am currently testing a stove to produce coal, to collect pyrolitic oil. I will build a heat exchanger to recover the btu lost in the exhaust gas. I would like to automate the loading of the wood. Ideally I want to heat my house, produce coal for the engines of my farm and biochar. It is a long-term project that I try to realize every day a little more
The idea of solving my energy needs without emitting co2 (carbon neutral). Or better in carbon positive (bury biochar ) motivates me enormously
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Just starting to venture on my property this year. This is the other 40 acres where the Maple trees are. On this same parcel there are some decent sized Cedar. That’s a different video. This week I made a trail to access Maple trees for the sap.It will also serve as a logging trail.
What I really like is all the pesky little Poplar trees. Perfect size for my little gasifier. This is my oil field for the future.
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