Forest chaos

The chaos everywhere in a forest manifests itself most visibly after a big wind storm. Softwoods were the main victims of fierce winds the hill experienced earlier this month. Some cutting this morning first processed some kindling and bigger round pieces near the house. Then trail cleanup began. Here are pictures of some of the damage from the big gale.

Two different harvests

A wood processing project has been going on for more than a week. This stack, about 400 feet closer to home than when the work began, will be moved up in wheelbarrow loads soon.

In other good news, the second parsnip harvest, shared with the neighbors, looks as great as the first.  They stayed in the ground over winter. This picture shows one-fourth of the entire seasonal crop. Parsnips are really, really tasty.

Splitting at very high efficiency

A second red maple was recently processed into 22" lengths for splitting, then brought down the south hill. We now have two nice pallets of split wood, the first one from the cutting session a few days ago.  The first pallet includes that wood:

This before/after shows the second pallet bare, then filled with split wood in less than an hour of two mauls swinging. Both pallets of wood will be cut in half in the sawbuck later in the spring before final stacking.