We drove out to an area that has lots of dead trees to cut up. Most of them were on the ground, some too wet to make use of. But a couple has just fell recently, and still pretty dry. Other than those lots of dead trees were standing, though we cut them down last as they are a little more risky to deal with than the already downed trees.
We spend a few hours driving back and forth loading up the truck and get lots of already dry, seasoned wood ready to burn. It was a great day, weather was not too bad during the day. A little muddy but nothing that bad.
The road to the downed trees is all rutted out, but with my big mud tires I have on my truck we will get through it.
We cut logs down to size to fit into the wood furnace, around 2-3 feet long. And we try to keep them under 100 pounds so we can move them without needing to team up. A bag of concrete is around 80 pounds, so having firewood heavier than that to deal with is a pain in the ass.
Most of these trees are alive, they may be missing their leaves but they are just dormant. Waiting for the winter to end, then they will grow new leaves. I am not after those trees, just the dead ones. Otherwise I have to dry out the fresh trees.. also known as green wood.
The truck did great on the road, did not even need to put in 4WD.
We eventually run out of wood laying around, and cut down the dead trees.
Once down we cut them into smaller pieces.
My foreman cuts them up and I haul them, then he joins me once he finishes cutting up wood.
Sometimes they are little piles, other times its bigger logs.
I really love my truck, the headache rack and new tailgate are great additions. The bars by the back glass gives that window protection. And that tailgate is so light, but really sturdy.
We could load it up even more if we put some wood siding on the back and along the left and right side of the truck.
Each load should last us a few days. We go back and forth and get a few truck loads.
Having big logs is great, but we also use smaller branches to burn as well. I have a whole barn full of smaller branches, so mostly we are just looking for bigger logs.
Eventually the sun starts going down, it gets really cold so we wrap up on our last load to haul back. And when we return we get an amazing sunset to see. All that wood should last a little less than a week when its warm. When its cold it will go through all of that much faster.
