Scavenging For Firewood

Lately, as Laura and I drive around, we’ve been noticing many people doing a lot of firewood cutting and splitting. Every time I see this, I gulp just a bit. I ask myself if people are really starting to squirrel away for next Winter. Unfortunately, I believe the answer is yes. In order to have your firewood seasoned properly to burn one Winter, you should have had that very firewood cut and split the Winter before. I have a feeling I’m going to be behind the curve for a while. Good thing I already have my one cord sitting in the shed waiting for me. Yeah right – that’ll last about a week.

Before I spend one penny on purchasing firewood from a local dealer, I intend to pick our property dry. We’ve got tons of standing firewood (dead trees) and trees that have been taken down and left to rot by our house’s previous owners. Some wood isn’t salvageable, but surprisingly enough, much of it is. I actually just found an Ash tree that’s been laying in the woods for a year or two yesterday. It’s still good and I plan on cutting it up and dragging it out just as soon as I sharpen the blade on my chainsaw.

As a matter of fact, just yesterday, I pulled two large pieces of Ash out from the edge of the pond, cut it up, split it and stacked it on my old wood pellet pallets. The whole endeavor took about an hour. Not bad for such a small amount of labor.

And I thought I’d mention, my new Carhartt logger boots are holding up very nicely. It’s comforting to have all this ankle support.

I’m not sure I’ve ever taken a picture of the house from behind the pond. I figured that I’d do that today, since I was back there. This is also right where that big Ash tree is laying.

Last Autumn, I took down a dead Cherry tree and some Poplar. I never got a chance to take it out of the woods because it snowed. And snowed and then snowed some more. Believe me, I thought I’d brave the snow and drag the logs up to the shed, but that idea quickly faded after I was knee deep. It just wasn’t possible. But I wanted to see how the wood held up over the Winter, so I walked back to where I left it. Yup, still there.

And while I was back there, I wanted to see the entrance to the Emerald Forest just one more time. I can’t get enough of it. It’s where the moss starts getting deep and walking doesn’t make a sound. It’s so soft. I’ll be taking pictures of moss for another post, so stay tuned.