As you all well know, it's getting cold out there! The time is nigh for the snow to fall, so the gathering of a sufficient amount of firewood for the winter is imperative!
As it turns out, one of my people had a fallen oak tree on his 50 acre estate that he needed me to cut up!
Shift-click the images above to open them in a new window to see the full-size panorama!
This beautiful estate has rolling hills, dense forest,...
...tilled land (on the right!) for crops & a pole-less 60x90 barn full of man-toys!!
I absolutely love it here!
Time to get to work!
I put the Neighbs in charge of filling the trailer w/ the smallest of branches so we could drive them over to the firepit area later!
Guba got busy w/ the chainsaw!
This was a big ol' 80 foot oak that had fallen 18 months prior!
There was a LOT of wood to cut up!
This was the very top of the tree after we had already started hackin' it up!
A lot of this tree was concealed in the underbrush!
This is looking down the main trunk right at the point where the first main branches split off.
Another 20 feet of 22 inch diameter trunk goes straight back into the bushes below the split!
This part of the trunk was too big for our chainsaws, so we'll have to come back for it later!
For now, we had plenty of other material to process!
Guba stuck to hackin' up big stuff while I used another chainsaw to clean off the small branches so that we could keep anything larger in diameter than my wrist!
Bit by bit, we cut up almost the entire tree!
We couldn't have asked for more perfect weather!
I hauled many branches similar to this one to the firepit on the ridge at the very back of the image!
I also had the Neighbs on fuel and lubrication duties!
These are just some of the branches that we left for the estate owner to burn in the firepit!
That should last them a while!
The firepit also has an amazing view!!
That is one of two man-made lakes that are aerated by fountains and stocked full of a wide variety of fish!!
We put the smaller logs in the trailer first!
The big logs went on top!
This was, quite literally, one ton (2,000 lbs!) of wood!!
I was thrilled that I managed to get this load home w/o incident!
Look at all that beautiful oak!
Looks like I've got some splittin' to do!
My log splitter will make quick work of it!
Now, that's some nice-lookin' firewood, no?!
Gotta love the scent of freshly split wood!
It's kinda hard to tell, but that is one sizable pile of oak!
Splitting all of this will take me several hours, but it will be well worth the effort!
Though this won't be enough to get me and the Neighbs through the winter, it certainly will go a long way toward cutting down my heating bills!
I hooked Guba up w a load of crap pine for his firepit for helping me on chainsaw duty earlier!
This was about as much wood as we could stuff into his trunk and still be able to close it!
Overall, this whole project was exhausting and time-consuming, but it went as smoothly as could have been expected! Now, if only I can find time to split it before the snow falls!
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