Shed filling up

The new shed is filling up quickly. This wood has been split for some time. It's nice and dry, totally ready for this season.

Lots of wood was cut, split, and stacked this weekend. These splendid pieces, from the trees cut down earlier this month, won't burn for more than a year. Paper birch needs many months to dry out. We'll have enough room in the shed for some newly split wood, as well.

Shed done as wood work continues

Some siding needed to be back ordered, so our new wood shed wasn't completed until yesterday.

A handy shelf will help us store kindling above the big wood.

Also some work this weekend on some future shed wood!

A morning of log cutting

We made progress on cutting the logs taken down on Monday. Tremendous weather this morning, with lows in the 50s and great shade, led our big saw to roar for a good chunk of the a.m. Some pieces are now short enough to split, but a lot of work was needed just to cut the longest and thickest logs down to four feet.

Lots of logs

Here are some pictures of the logs placed in several places after Monday's cutting operation. The tractor moved 6 bucket loads close to the house. These will be cut, split, and then stacked on the north side of the main garage.

Some of the longer logs in other locations have been measured and marked, the blue line shows where the saw will cut the log. Smaller pieces will be 44 inches, then go in the sawbuck for higher cutting than the ground.

Big logs like these will be cut shorter because of the weight.

Some red maple was included in the job, but most of the logs are paper birch, like these.

The work crew chipped smaller portions of each tree. We decided to keep the end product. We'll use this as mulch and in some wet areas in our trail system.

Raining sawdust

In order to protect power lines and get a year of firewood, a cutting operation was completed today. The work required professionals and a big bucket truck because of the proximity to power lines. Because of the cutting high up in the bucket, it was raining sawdust today! Here are some images of the work.

The biggest trees taken down were showing signs of dieback. These were also the trees that were the biggest threat to the lines. Several lovely paper birches also taken down along driveway. Just the growth from all of the young paper birches on our property this year might make up for the biomass cut down today, though! We'll get a year's worth of firewood out of the deal. Lots of sawing and splitting to do to prep the heat for our 2016-17 season.