Firewood

This past January was a very cold month and our wood-stove made  these cold days of  winter comfortable. We have lots of firewood for this year but now it's time to start working on next year's firewood supply.

After a week of sub-zero overnight temperatures, the conditions were perfect with today's temperature climbing into the low 40's, the ground was frozen rock hard, very little snow and calm winds,  it's time to haul firewood. A couple of years ago a pipeline right-of-way was cleared through the woods on our cabin property and the logs were stacked at the edge of the right-of-way. When the conditions are right, we load the logs on a trailer and haul them to our barn, less than a mile away, where they are cut and split into firewood. 

Firewood

We are half way through Winter and a warm wood stove helps relieve the chill of  the cold days of February. Not only is February a good time to use a wood stove, it is also a good time stock up on fire wood for next year.

With the ground frozen solid we are able to haul logs out of our woods without doing too much damage to the ground. A photo of Mary driving our tractor to the pipeline right-of-way on our property where trees cleared for the pipeline are stacked.



We used the front-end loader on the tractor to load logs on a flatbed trailer and haul the logs to our barn, about a mile and a half drive. With the trailer parked next to the barn the logs were cut into blocks.



Another load of logs ready to be cut into blocks.



Large blocks ready to be split. Many of the logs were over 24 inches across.



Once the blocks are split into firewood it is loaded onto pallets and moved to a storage area using my old John Deere tractor.



The firewood is temporarily stored in our barn to keep the snow off it.



More firewood stored in the barn. This firewood will be moved closer to our house and allowed to season (dry out) for next year's heating season.

Keeping warm

We may not have much snow this year but the weather has turned colder. Jason and Mary Abell took advantage of the lack of snow and frozen ground to stock up on firewood.