Laying in next year's heat

A friend of ours is allowing us to cut firewood from some of her property.  Because summer is a time full of mosquitos, fire ants and ticks, heat and humidity, and poison ivy, the best time to cut wood, is the fall/winter.  

So as we continue to burn the wood we already have split and stacked, we are cutting next year's supply.   I had gone out a couple weeks back, and marked half a dozen trees to cut, and one huge fallen tree.  I wasn't sure the fallen tree was going to be usable, as wood here tends to rot quickly once on the ground.  But DH took the #3 hammer and thumped on the main trunk, and it sounded solid.  This particular tree was far too large for my smaller 16" saw.  It was almost too large for DH's 20" Stihl 311.

Big Orange rules the day!

He commenced to clear out some work space while I went to drop a pair of smaller trees.  As I am new to felling trees, I wanted some easier ones to clear and fell.  They dropped cleanly pretty much right where I wanted, so I was pleased.  After chopping them up, I went to see what was going on with the big tree.  

See that mess covering the base of the trunk?  That's what we have to clear out to finish cutting.

Well, it seems that big old oak was indeed still good!  DH was busily cutting it into more manageable rounds.  Turns out though, the rounds will need split on site, as they are going to be too large to lift into the truck.  Such fun!  I was glad he had the big tree to work on, as he does enjoy chainsawing stuff up.  I do think though, it's gonna cost me around $600 to let him buy a bigger saw!

The small trees, plus two of the bigger rounds.

The big tree has at least 30-40' of usable wood in it.  The rounds are almost too large (and some are) to load into the Gorilla Cart to haul over to the truck.  So DH, Monkey2 and I all rolled some of them over to the growing wood pile.  He wanted to clear out some of the rounds to make more safe workspace.  Rolling big rounds is a lot more work than you might think.  There's still another 10-15' or so of main trunk to cut.  We just have to unbury it from the mountain of undergrowth that has encased it.

  

Rolling a big round

  It was a lot of work yesterday, and everyone is still tired from it even today.  And there is more work to be done--the rest of the big tree, taking down 3-4 more marked trees, and then transporting it all home to split, stack and dry for next year. 

Someone's looking pleased!