Our extra long working weekend

So what did we do on our long weekend?? We had 4 cords of firewood delivered of which I had to re-cut @2.5 cords of. Our supplier likes to cut his wood long, 18-20 inches. The problem is that our wood stove is only 16 inches deep and wide, so most of what he brought us will not even come close to fitting, grrr!! I cut just about all of the 2.5 cords when my awesome wife whom was stacking it all while I was cutting it, had had enough and decided to just pile up the remaining wood for cutting at a later date. I must mention just how awesome my wife is! She stacked nearly ALL the 3.5 cords we got put up by herself as I was re-cutting the rest of it! I was cutting it one piece at a time with my power miter saw when my awesome wife suggested piling the wood up on timbers over a ratchet strap, tightening it up to hold it all together and cutting it en masse with the big chainsaw. I am going to try that at a later date as we also had a friend from work out to try to cut down our dying walnut tree.

Our friend had said he'd probably be able to cut it down without a bucket lift but after cutting 3-4 big limbs off having one clip the power line coming to the house, he re-evaluated this decision and told us he needed a bucket, we agreed, no harm no foul ;o) He agreed to sell me one of his small chiansaws, a 14" bar McCulloch 130. This little saw is going to save my back when limbing out trees that are coming down as now all I have is Poulan 20" bar monster that gets pretty heavy when working with smaller limbs, etc... He also agreed to bring me out his wood chipper so I could start chipping up the mountainous pile of brush I have piled up from our basswood tree that came down last fall. My original idea was to save the brush to cut into small enough pieces to use for kindling to light our fires with..... I worked about an hour one day a couple weekends ago on that idea and let's just say that plan was a bust as I simply do not enough time nor patience to try and accomplish that goal.

I spent the whole next day splitting and stacking all the wood from the limbs and cutting, splitting and stacking more big wood we had out back. All total, I cut, split, and stacked @ another half cord. We now have @ 3 full cords out back seasoning, our friend thinks we probably have @ another 2 cords in the walnut tree to add to that in a few weeks. We have a bunch, 4-50 gallon trash cans FULL of end cuts from the @2.5 cords I had to cut to length so we decided to cook our steaks over it that evening. AWESOME! I had never had a steak cooked over hardwood before, but now we know we will be able to use all those end cuts eventually. I also plan to try my hand at making homemade charcoal with some of that stuff.

Yesterday I spent the day cleaning up all the brush and bark that was left over from the walnut limbs and 4 cords we had delivered.... Then my friend showed up with his brush chipper and the small saw I bought. He helped me chip up a bit of the brush just to show me how everything operates and of course we chatted for a while ;o) He took off and I finally was able to get my mowing done and of course as usual, crazy neighbor had to drive his car on his property to be sure I hadn't mowed over the property line..... Yes, he is a douche and then some, it's a long story I won't get into here.

Now that I have a chipper here I would really like to be able to take the rest of the week off to get the brush all done but, I guess I'll have to try to get at it on the weekends. The way the forecast looks for the upcoming weekend, I'll not be able to get anything done outside as it's saying there's a 60% chance of rain ;o((...... So again, we had an extra long weekend that we spent working, not vacationing ;o) I suppose that's the price we pay for wanting to be prepared ;o)