Yup, our ash is pooping out. This summer I bought a few loads of cut ash slab wood, because I knew time was running low, the mill is sawing all the ash into RxR ties, ouch! The land owners are happy to get something for it before it is just firewood. Next the hemlock is slated to die from some kind of bug that is headed my direction.
This morning I woke up to a 49℉ day, perfect ! ! ! 
RightO’ there you go . . . wood is the very best DYI fuel for powers.
Even in the worst of conditions you have at least 2-3 years to get it worked up from falling, or incident(storms, wildfires and such) obtained. Bit of cover and you can stretch that out to up to 10 years even here in the rainforest.
By then with some work and planning you will have been able to re-grow s-o-m-e-t-h-i-n-g usable again.
Killer bugs are bad news.
Extended droughts just as bad.
Your only real choice is to re-plant and favor different species that are resistant to these assaults.
Sad to lose the old familiars. But change, adapting, is actually Ma’Natures way.
Takes some very special hardy trees to live, survive and reproduce out on our very windy salt ocean coasts. The same need hardy but different species to thrive up high mountains; or East-side high&dry, half the year dry-dry.
Ha! All of these if planted here inland valley favorable, grow weakly; and usually will not self-reproduce.
Ha! Ha! The most hazardous thing here for us is that fast spinning saw chain inches from your feet and legs. Bucking up the crisscross felled stick pile-ups. Odd. I can handle that with ease. Yell “snake” will sure make me jump! The flying insects I can handle long sleeved buttoned up. Unknowing standing in a trail of carpenter ants or angry red&blacks crawled up and biting will have me doing the fast strip-down ASAP!!
tree-farmer Steve unruh
Interesting point on the ash. I keep thinking I should saw some here just to have sort of a history thing. I have always wanted to do something with wood floors or paneling in a house where different rooms where done in different wood all natural stain sort of a way of showcasing the different native woods. But soo far my mill is still waiting for me to get it setup and running…
Here is a photo of one of my wood piles that I recently split.
Thanks Ray, I will try it on the next batch I make.
Bob
Hello Dan
When I built my house I did as you stated above with several different woods. ( I like it )
Pine , oak, popular ,cherry , cedar , walnut and pecan . You can see some of the wood on the first two or three pictures on this thread .
Hi Wayne
There was a video you did talking about wood gasification from your house it was a long video starts on the porch if I remember right. I loved that video both for the content and for the shots of your house it is just the type of look I was thinking about. I found that video before I knew about drive on wood.
I like it Wayne! What do you use to wax/polish the wood?
Good morning Kristijan
A mixture of linseed oil and mineral spirits.
That first milk is called colostrum, it shouldn’t contain blood, but it is essential for the calf, yellow with butterfat, and full of maternal antibodies. If the calf won’t suck straight away it’s good practice to milk and bottle feed some, that usually peps the calf up, gets things on track.
Yup I couldn’t figure out how to spell that every time I tried it came out messed up. Your right but the first milking here often had blood in the milk and was what my grandfather claimed you uses, the next 2 to 3 days it was just colostrum. We always kept a bottle frozen incase you lost the mother you could save the calf. When we had 200 head of milking cows you where always having calves born. I don’t miss that but I sure do hope my 9 belties calve out soon. Learned the hard way not to keep an old steer in the herd he stopped the young bull from breeding and now I am way late on calves. Old Murphy has been about my only companion since I tried to get the farm going again. But I do have a nice garden this year so there is that at least.
Thank you Mr Wayne, linseed oil is my favorite wood preservative. It intenses the colour/grain so nice. Just never got it to shine so nice 
Baked colostrum with a bit of fennel is a delicasy! Pudding/chese like structure.
We have a cow that always produces brown colostrum. No idea why but its the colour of machiato.
Wood Supply turned into Charcoal form, I cleaned out the fire pit after the fire gathering on Saturday night. Had a great time with everyone catching up on everything that has been happing in their lives. This is not as efficient as my retort but a lot more fun.
I like those fires too! Haveing fun with friends, roast something delicious, and in the morning, plenty of charcoal to be filled in the gasifier!
Ran across this video I thought you all would enjoy.
My brother in law has a mill just like that. He powers his off from a tractor PTO. Besides farming he saws logs for a pallet factory near by. He got into it when he was milking cows he need saw dust for bedding, so he picked up one of these old timers. We sawed all the lumber for my house — I saw “we”— my contribution was the part the man with the beard did.
I got to be on a first name basis with most of the boards. I took them off the saw mill, we loaded them on my truck with pallet forks, but then I had to unload each one and stack it in a pile on the back forty for several years to dry, then I took them out of the drying stacks and loaded them back on the truck, drove them up to Michigan where a gentleman had an old plainer set up, he ran them through the plainer and I took the off and loaded them back on the truck, I took them back to the farm and stacked them in the barn out of the weather, then I took each board out to the building sight where I cut it to length and finally nailed it up in the new house.
Some days I can sit down here in the basement and look up at the floor joice or the bottom side of the sub floor and say “good morning board. I remember when you were just a slab of wood born out of a log.” TomC
Tom it is nice to see stuff you have done the work to make from start to finish. And don’t under value the work you did as the second man I often find a second man would be very helpful around here on my farm. Makes me miss the good old days when my two uncles ran the place and we where able to support 4 people working with the milk herd. But those days and 2/3 of the fields are long gone. Now I make do limiting costs to and for work to what I can do alone…
Haha, I know that feeling. Same thing with some firewood logs. You get to know some of them. Only difference is they have a shorter life.
Jan-Ola can help here but this is the way they used to do it:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJEdl6CoM6o
