More than foliage

The changing color of leaves on hardwood trees gets the most eye candy credit in autumn.  But the best season in northern New England offers great beauty in many other ways.  First, there's fog from the Connecticut River visible from a high part of Hardwood Hermitage (notice how leaves are still predominantly green).

Then there's a preciously iconic image:  Double trunk yellow birch with a big rock!

Ash starts foliage show

White ash often leads the way as the first tree to turn color as the foliage season begins.  We are still three days from the start of autumn, but ash has begun to show yellow and purple rather prominently.  Pics in a week or two will show perhaps the season's best color:  Several large ash with crowns full of purple leaves.

From bowsawed to big stack

A dying paper birch was dropped with the bow saw last week.  Yesterday, the big tree was cut to the 22 inch line, then split, then moved up, then transferred from wheelbarrow to tractor bucket to a big stack. 

The wood was split into two big piles, pictured below.

On a property that makes great use of tools, the wheelbarrow may be the unsung hero of them all.  Sporting a new bright red paint job, 13 loads of paper birch were moved from the wheelbarrow to tractor this a.m.

Splitting remains the favorite activity on Hardwood Hermitage.  Paper birch is relatively easy to split.  The tree dealt with yesterday had many pieces without any knots at all.  Pictured below is a big exception to that rule, though.  The knot sticking out of that piece made for especially difficult work to whack the bigger piece down to size.  Like the rest of the pieces brought up today, this one will get cut in half, then stacked -- for burning two years from now.

Forest labor on Labor Day

Three hours of work yesterday morning helped expand the firewood and kindling supply.  The cutting and lopping focused on apple wood.  One of several trunks broke off of a big stump, falling across a walking trail and into several smaller trees.  Then, additional cutting led to more wood from an apple that the bow saw took down a few months ago.

Apple has perhaps the most beautiful heartwood around.

The impacted stump still has plenty of apple biomass.  Remnants of the broken stem can be seen on the right.

A baby oak and several paper birches took a direct hit from the fallen apple trunk.  The oak bends a bit now, but should be OK, especially with the extra sun it will receive.  The birches will be added to the future kindling supply.  Here's the oak:

Even with the loss of some paper birches, the delightful species is not anywhere close to extinction on the hill.  Here's a shot of three young ones near the impact point of the apple.  Like the oak, they will get more sun now.

800 for August

It took five tries, but the Hardwood Hermitage solar panels have created 800 kilowatt/hours in an August.  This is the 7th month we've reached that epic level of production.  Hooray for the sun!!!

Nature's blessings

What spectacular weather here lately! August has been rather sunny without being too hot.  This morning barely surpassed 40 degrees. 

Nature blesses Northern New Hampshire in many ways.  Besides weather like today, some examples on Hardwood Hermitage include:

1.  Plenty of blackberries.  About 8 pints were picked today.  The awesome fruit is being turned into jam now.

2.  The sheer bliss of productive tomato and pepper plants.

3.  And, the greatest aspect of enjoying nature on Hardwood Hermitage:  Growing your own heat.  This big stack of about 2-and-a-half cords glistens in the sun this afternoon.  None of these delightful pieces will burn for over a year.

Nearing 9 cords

Our goal at the start of each burning season is to have 9 cords of wood split and stacked in our various storage locations.  With another round of cutting, splitting, and stacking this weekend, we're almost there.  Nine cords is enough to heat the house for two years.  Here are pics taken after this morning's latest efforts.  The first picture shows a close up shot of some split black cherry, a very pretty wood.

Kindling we use to get fires started does not count toward the nine cord goal.  All of the small stuff in the front of this picture will help the stove get going, but not until 2019, most likely.  We already have way more kindling ready to burn than we'll use this looming burning season.

The work never ends, as attested by piles of some wood yet to be cut or split.