How do you do firewood?

[bigtreesinwa]

Ok, so I finally acquired some beautiful land with an abundance of timber in Western Washington. I figure I'll have a lifetime supply of firewood from my property if I just can figure out how to efficiently make good use of it.

So I'm wondering how do you guys do firewood? What trees do you cut up, where do you buck them (do you skid them to where you pile firewood or buck them and then haul them), how do you haul the firewood around, and the like.

I see lots of fancy equipment (ATVs, skidders, etc) that I can buy that will make firewood cutting a breeze - but spending $5000 on an ATV or $15,000 on a skidder doesn't really make sense to help me with 3 - 6 cords of wood that I might do in a year.

Basically, I'm wondering if anyone here would like to tell their stories on how they do firewood, and then I'll read them and figure out what makes the best sense for me. It doesn't matter if you live in Washington or Maine or Minnesota - tell me your stories and I'll take whatever I can from them.

[breederman]

You can spend alot of money on equipment ,but you don,t have to. I use a chain saw and an old Geo Tracker for my "Woods mobile"  I can skid with it but generally cut to length where they lay, as it dose no damage to my roads and I don,t have to worry about damage to other trees along the skid road. A small fwd pickup would haul more cut wood but would be less manuverable in the woods. Besides my back and elbows need plenty of rest breaks!
 If you cut blowdowns and dead trees and then work on ones that obviously should come down you will probably find more wood than you need.

[Ed]

All of my firewood and logs that come from our family farm are salvage. Some of the trees are easy to get to, others can be a pain.
I primarily use 2 different toys, uh, tools to get the wood out.
For smaller stuff that doesn't get split, I can usually access it with my 6x6 Polaris. Cut to length, load up the box & head out.
Larger logs I get with the tractor (New Holland 2120). I prefer to skid the logs to a landing point where I can block & stack them for splitting at a later time.

A 4x4 atv or compact tractor with a small trailer works good for firewood cutting, you can get in and around the woods easily with a minimum of damage to the area.

Ed

[Dodgy Loner]

Even a small acreage can yield more firewood than you can handle.  I made spending money when I lived with my parents by cutting firewood during the spring and summer and selling it in the winter.  They only had 15 acres of forest, and I only cut dead, diseased or deformed trees.  I sold about 5-10 cords a year.

I used a tractor to skid the logs to a central location where I cut them into firewood lengths and split them.  If I had a tree that was inaccessible, I would just cut and split on site, and haul the wood to the tractor.  I don't like doing that, though, because there are more limbs and shrubs to trip you out in the woods than there are in a clear location - not really what you want when you're handling chainsaws and axes.

[RSteiner]

Been at this fire wood thing for 34 heating seasons now at about 8 cords per year.  The method that seems to best for me with the equipment I have is this.  I have a 30 hp. Kubota with a Farmi winch and a trailer that will hold 3/4 of a full cord.  I pull the wood to the tractor, block it into stove length chunks, load them into the tractor and take them to the wood piling area.  Some times I split the load on the spot and throw it in a pile, some times I pile the chunks to be split later.

The split wood gets piled where it will live until it is time to fill the "wood box" a.k.a. the back porch.  I try to have two years wood on hand so I can have good dry wood to burn.  Most of my wood comes either a couple of miles from home or up to 10 miles away.

I have tried many other methods most of them involved handling the wood several more times.  I try not to move or handle each piece more than necessary.  Those who pile their fire wood in palletized loads which they can move with a tractor seem to have an advantage in the handling area.

Randy

[beenthere]

......... abundance of timber in Western Washington. .................... What trees do you cut up, ?

What species do you have that you want to turn into firewood?

Level land, or steep hillside?

Many ways to do it, just depends on how much time you have want to spend, and what $$$ you want to invest in toys tools and such. 

I've gone from splitting at the stump, and hauling split wood in a trailer to a wood pile, where it was stacked under roof for drying two years.....to pulling in log lengths to a splitting area where the split pieces are stacked on pallets and moved to a drying site for two years (at least), then the pallets of dry wood are moved to the garage for burning. I've a wood splitter and a 33 hp tractor/loader with forks for equipment.  Tops are either cut to firewood length in the woods and hauled in the bucket or cut to short (three firewood) lengths and hauled to the splitting area on the forks.

 

[bigtreesinwa]

What species do you have that you want to turn into firewood?

Here is Western Washington, I have pretty much whatever species of firewood to choose from. I have lots to choose from, starting cheap wood (poplar and cottonwood), traditional Washington firewood (Douglas-Fir and Big Leaf Maple), to prime firewood (Bitter Cherry and Paper Birch).

The fun thing around here with firewood is the diameter of the wood. The bitter cherry runs up to 16" (ground level), the red cedar runs 24", the Douglas-fir runs 36". While one tree holds a lot of wood, it also creates some interested problems because the rounds are huge and heavy!

[maple flats]

How much acreage of these do you have? If there is enough I would suggest you mark for a timberstand improvement cutting on a limited scale. Sell the bigger/better logs and process the tops. There must be some smaller loggers in the area that will do a 1 or 2 load harvest. The stuff unsuitable for the mill will give you lots of firewood. Have the logger haul wwhat you are keeping to a landing along with what is being sold. Have a forester mark the woodlot before contacting the logger. Most states have state foresters who will help you with this at no cost to you (unless you count what taxes you already pay) Having a timberstand improvement marking and harvest will help you realize much better forest income in years to come.

[John Mc]

Sorry for this long ramble. iI just thought I'd show how my approach varied with the equipment I had available, and the amount of time I could spend away from the house (a 3 and a 6 year old limit free time in the woods). My signature quote on another web forum is "When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem tends to look like a nail"... and my firewood gathering efforts have definitely followed that observation.

I started out felling and cutting to 4 foot lengths right at the stump, then hauling them back to the house in the bucket of the tractor (occasionally with a 12 or 16 footer dragging behind me). Not very efficient, since the bucket doesn't hold much. I'd occasionally make trips out on my "Garden Tractor" (basically a glorified riding lawn mower) with a small wagon behind that to pick up some of the 4 footers I'd left out there. Eventually started using an 8' x 5' trailer my neighbor made from spare parts. This helped the efficiency of the hauling a good bit. If I was short on "away from the house time" (i.e. it's my turn to watch the kids) This is what I stuck with for a while. It let me get a fair amount of wood back up to the house, and I could cut it to stove length and still be around to keep an eye on the kids. When I had more time, I'd cut to stove length right in the woods. Most of the trees I've been taking on my own property were on or near the trails, so this system worked out well for a good while.

More recently, I got into some firewood harvesting a few miles from my house, in a cooperative venture with a group of co-owners on that land. I drove my tractor over (don't own a trailer big enough for it). Generally I would drop the trees, and limb them. Where I could get a chain to them, I'd drag them to trailside, then cut to four foot lengths and load in the trailer. Where the trees were too far in to reach with the tractor, I cut to our foot lengths and dragged them out to the trailer by hand (a pair of hand-held tongs helped with this tremendously. I still spent the whole time wishing I owned a logging winch). I'd use my tractor to run the trailer down to the landing, and then use my minivan to pull the trailer home. (The minivan is rated for 3500# towing, so a half cord of green hardwood plus the trailer kept me comfortably under my towing limit, even in this hilly area). Towards the end of that season, I started cutting things down to 16" as soon as I got them trailside... I figured it didn't make much sense to do some of the cutting, load them into the trailer, then unload and do more cutting when I got home.

I could see that someday I would get to the limits of what was easy to reach on my own land, and I and the others on the jointly owned parcel could also put a logging winch to good use on that land. So, after 6 years of keeping my eye out for a decent used logging winch to fit my tractor, I gave up and bought a new Uniforest 35E logging winch (more or less similar to a Farmi 351). In most cases now, I drop the trees, skid them trailside with the winch, and cut to stove length there, then load into the trailer and haul it home. In some cases on my own property, I just skid the limbed trees back up to the house area, but I plan to minimize that, to keep the mess down.

Before I bought the winch, the joint owners and I were discussing buying an appropriate rope and a snatch block. The plan was to use a tractor or pickup to pull the rope and skid logs. With the snatch block tied to a likely tree or stump, the truck or tractor could just drive down the trail to pull the logs out of the woods and up to the trail. That might have worked, but would probably take two people to operate. Somethign to think about if the hand hauling starts to get old, but you can't justify the purchase of more expensive equipment.

I do all my splitting up near the house. It makes it easier to work in with other chores, and to do short sessions here and there. I also own a 16 ton electric log splitter (the biggest one I could find that would still run off of 110 volt AC). If I wanted to split in the woods, I'd have to drag that out with me. If I had a gas or 3 point hitch log splitter, I suppose I might do some of the splitting in the woods. If I were splitting in the woods, I'd probably go to the pallets with plastic fencing for sides. I'd cut, split, and throw the logs into the pallets, which would probably minimize handling.

Hope some of this helps, or at least sparks some ideas.

John Mc

[PineNut]

When it comes to firewood, I am a little on the lazy side. I cut it to firewood length as close as I can to where I dropped it. Of course I must have tractor access to it. Otherwise I drag it to a trail & then cut it to firewood length. I then place a pallet by the wood & load it. Move it with the FEL to a storage area. Inside area of the pallet is approximately 3 x 5 by 4 high, which is about a quarter chord (as loaded). That is about all my FEL will handle when the wood is green.   It stays on the pallet until I burn in an outside furnace. Handle it twice, once when cut & once when burned.

[zackman1801]

when i was cutting firewood about a month back with my uncle we would cut the trees that we wanted, get them limbed up and then get the tractor in with the winch, winch em in and then after we had a few hitched on drag em to a landing that was about 200 feet away, since we were just off the lawn into the woods. after we got about 6-7 hitches out we would then take a short break and cut the smaller stuff into 30" lengths, and we then left the bigger stuff to be hauled to his house by a pulp truck, we were cutting at his fathers house which was only about 10 mins away so it wasnt much for trucking. The stuff we cut up we came back and got with a pick up and a trailer.

[Wallys World]

We have 100 acres to get wood from. We moved here 2 years ago and I haven't cut a live tree down yet for firewood. We usally cut it in tree length and skid it to a central spot where we buck it it and split it. Then we take it to the house. We are supplying 3 houses, my aunt, cousin and ourselves. Luckily all the houses are on the 100 acres so we don't move it too far.

[woodmills1]

I am spolied, I have a metavic log loading trailer.  I pick up and load 10 to 16 foot lengths and drive them to my splitter and then hold them at waist height with the loader to cut.  Any too big to lift I put on the splitter with the loader.  Once you have a grapple you will never consider any other method.

[thecfarm]

I bought a outdoor furnace instead of a log loading trailer.Maybe next time I'll get one and be spoiled.Now I twitch the wood out tree length and push it up in a pile and saw it 4 foot and wait for it to snow.I'm still clearing the grown up pasture.A 8 inch tree is big in the pasture.Now I twitch out limbs and all and pull up to the brush pile and saw off what I don't want.When I get to the wood pile I saw the limbs off and throw them into the wood pile to be sawed up.When I was cutting for logs,I saw the logs out and saw the limbs off.Those bigger tree limbs really dig up the ground.Than I would pile up the limb wood and pick it up with a trailer.I would pile up the limb wood in one long pile and than get on top of it and saw down through it.Some slow handling the limb wood,but I would burn 2-3 cords of it as year.

[Ironwood]

I have been burning wood in one form or another since I was 14 years old washing cars in my mothers garage in the winter to make money (I was a hustler early on). I am at the point where I tend to buy it to feed the wood shop stove. HOWEVER, if I where to begin cutting my own, I would use a trailer w/ either metal crates or pallets with sides as others have shown. The ABSOLUTE key is to touch the wood as few times as possible. load it right onto the pallet/crate and never touch it until it goes into the stove. I try to avoid splitting at all costs (more handling), rounds burn longer anyway. I would use a forklift or tractor with FEL to unload the pallets until needed then move them close to the door and go at it.

         Ironwood

[Corley5]

How I used to do it and the progression toward how it's done on the farm now    Went from taking the splitter and old manure spreader to the woods to a processor and elevator.  Wood is no longer stacked in the sheds for our use we just back in with the old spreader or dump truck and dump a couple cords as we need it    We used an H Farmall with an old manure loader to load the processor and a B Farmall to run the old hay elevator to load the dump trailer.  Then an Iron Mule forwarder was added to the mix and a better old elevator powered with a Chinese Honda clone.  A year ago a 753 Bobcat entered the mix, last fall a purpose built firewood conveyor joined the fleet and last Dec an 84 1 ton Chevy 4X4 dump came into play.  Now I want to get the processor in a building over a barn cleaner.  That'll be a couple years. 
 

[rebocardo]

Your best bet is a full sized 4x4, with A/C, V-8/diesel power, and a dump body. I can speak from personal experience, tossing firewood into a bed and then tossing it out can get a bit much after the first two cords in the same day.

Plus, if you decide to sell it, it is much nicer to just dump a 1/2 a cord then to unload it by hand.

I would buck the trees I wanted, take a log splitter in the bed or on a small trailer, split the rounds, then once I have split 2-3 cords, come back to it pick it all up in the truck.

I would lean towards a Ford F-350 7.3 4x4 (mostly for the beefy front drive train) or Dodge 3500 I-6 Cummings. The reason for the diesels is because it uses much less fuel idling, they have the payload capacity for carrying green firewood and the dump body, and they have the low rpm torque you need to get going while driving slow.

I would avoid skidding logs just because of the dirt in the logs, unless you decide to go big buck$ and get a log arch and all that. Just remember when you skid using a cable or chain, have good headache protection.

[Rick Alger]

I've done a good bit of logging with skidders and horses. For volume production, skidding tree length to a yard is the most efficient.

But cutting 3-6 cords a year on your own land requires different efficiencies.

Years ago when we had no money, we would selectively cut wood on our own land, split it by hand and pile it on runners in the woods. Then we would let it season a year, and  scoot it out directly to the woodshed with a $150 Welsh pony. (One year when the pony was lame we used a homemade hand sled.) It took less than a week to cut split and pile five cords of wood at the stump, and 2-4 days to scoot it to cover.

[John Mc]

Maybe I misinterpreted BigTreesinWa's original post. I got the impression he was looking for low-budget/simple ways of gathering and processing firewood for personal use. I'd love to have some of the equipment described here, but for personal firewood use, even in cooperation with 8 or 10 other families I'm pushing what is justifiable with the equipment I already have (Compact Tractor, logging winch, beater trailer, chainsaws, and miscellaneous tools).

I'd love to have a real log trailer with a grapple loader, a dump trailer or dump bed truck, but that's just not in the cards for me... unless one of the neighbors or friends gets much more serious about this and we can share the cost.

Considering I started with an old Sears garden tractor (mower deck removed, ag-style tires) with a Rubbermaid trailer, a Jonsered 2141 chainsaw and a splitting maul, I'm thrilled to have the equipment I have now... now if I could just stop drooling over all the great stuff the rest of you guys have.

John Mc

[DKinWA]

I was just looking at craigslist and there are lots of folks that will cut/split/deliver/stack for less than $200 a cord here in western washington.  If you only need 6 cords a year, I would keep your equipment needs to the bare minimum.  A saw, safety equipment, splitting mall and a wheel barrow or garden cart is about all I would buy if you are trying to cut costs on heating.  If you worked a few hours a week getting your wood, it wouldn't take long stockpile 6 cords.  You also get the added benefit of getting regular exercise which is a real plus if you have an office job.  Sell a couple extra cords a year and you would pay for the the equipment you purchased in no time at all.

[Ron Scott]

How you do it depends upon whether you're doing it for your personal home use or commercial volume sales as indicated by many of the above described methods and equipment used.

The basics needed are a chainsaw to cut it and a pickup truck and/or trailer to haul it.

[bigtreesinwa]

I just want to say a big thanks to everyone on here that told their stories about how they do firewood. I can't begin to tell you how informative and interesting it was to read all of your tales!

My big reason for asking is I've seen people with piles and piles of firewood and have been trying to figure out how they do it. Your information has explained to me very well the variety of equipment that a guy could have to use for firewood, and some of you look pretty darn efficient at it! I'm very impressed.

For my needs, a real simple system will work fine and I'm putting together my collection of gear to do firewood. But everything said here is good for me to reference because I now understand the range (from very simple to very complex) of methods to get firewood.

My next post I'll share how my father used to get firewood for our house.

Thanks again

Greg

[bigtreesinwa]

I grew up in a house that was heated solely by wood. We had electric baseboard heat but it was very expensive and I don't think we ever used it once during the entire time I grew up. We did end up getting a pellet stove at some point in my childhood and then finally switched over to natural gas when it was run outside our house, but my father used wood heat 100% in the winter for about 20 or 30 years. Keep in mind, this is in Northwestern Montana and our winters were cold! Our house didn't have as much insulation as it should have and it really cooled off when the wind blew and a blizzard came through.

My father worked for Plum Creek Timber Company as a timber cruiser. He had a truck that he used to get to the timber sales and evaluate how much the trees were worth and how difficult it would be to get them to the local sawmill. So when he'd be cruising timber (on Forest Service land), he'd spy a couple of dead standing snags during the day. He'd go back after work, cut down a couple trees, throw them in the back of the truck and bring them home. The snags usually didn't have any branches or bark on them, were well dried, and were right on the side of the road so it wasn't hard at all to bring them home.

At some point, he noticed that the Plum Creek mill in Columbia Falls was throwing away a lot of good mill ends. (These are foot long sections of wood that weren't usable for lumber and they scrapped them.) He talked with the operators, and they started saving them for him and he'd take home a load of softwood mill scraps and burn these. They worked nice for kindling since they were easy to chop up and they were also very clean. Eventually Plum Creek caught on that a lot of guys were doing this and started charging $50 a load but that was still a good price. Today I imagine they use them for sawdust or something worthwhile.

So for my father, he had it about as easy as it could get for firewood. By bringing home a few trees a week all summer long he'd have a nice winters supply of firewood, and since they were already dead and dried snags, there wasn't a need to season them. But he was lucky and it was a nice concidence of him keeping his eyes open and having a job that kept him in the woods.

[NYH1]

I cut mostly Black Cherry, with a little Maple and Oak.  I used to cut them into 9 foot lengths, then skid them back to my landing with my four wheeler.  Once I was at my landing I'd block the 9 footers into 18 inch logs.  Put them in the truck and/or in my 14x8 double axle trailer, bring them home and split them.  The problem with this was the 9 footers would get full of dirt and I'd have to sharpen my chains A LOT.

So I started blocking them right where I felled them.  I'd just put the 18 inch logs into my four wheeler trailer, ride back, put them in the truck and/or on my big trailer.  For me this saved time.  I didn't have to handle them as much and my chains would stay sharp for ever.  When they say "keep your chain out of the dirt", they aren't kidding!

Truth be told, if I could have brought my splitter with me, I would have split them right there too.  I just couldn't.

You have to try a few different ways and see what works for you.  I also only cut hardwoods for burning.  Of course I'm in the Northeast and hardwoods are abundant.
 



     

[WildDog]

Bigtrees we only have Aussie Hardwoods to cut and have 700 acres that has about 100 windrowed piles of timber dozed up, we don't cut commercially but enjoy family outings to cut our firewood. Last year we burn't about 3000 cubic metres of this piled up timber to get rid of rabbit and fox harbor.

I usually cut the wood and Tim my son likes to split it then we stack it on a utility or the bucket and carry-all on our tractor and take it back to the shed. This means a lot of double handling but I like the bonding time i have with the family. I don't like to come back from the paddock in the tractor empty handed so will often pick up a log in the 4 in 1 and bring it home for firewood.

We went out this morning to cut a load.

 
My 16yr old log splitter

 
Cutting some windrowed firewood before we burn the pile

 
Windrowed hardwood timber

 
straight grained stringy Bark hardwood splits fairly easy

 
seasoned cranky grained Whitebox hardwood, this stuff gives you a real workout when splitting, sometimes I rip it out with the saw

[rebocardo]

> Whitebox hardwood

That almost looks like sweetgum.

[thecfarm]

WildDog,is this your land.Why was the trees windrowed up?100 piles is alot.Glad to see you are using it.I burn a lot of dead wood.If my wife could feed the out door furnace I would burn it all winter.I brought her up in woods and showed her what mother nature does to thin out a wood lot.I have alot of dead stuff to get out.

[Engineer]

I wish I had a tried and true method, but I don't.  When I used to harvest firewood with my dad, back in my teens, he had an old '74 Jeep CJ5 that was his woods vehicle.  He drop trees, buck to length right in the woods, and load up the jeep as much as it would carry and stockpile it outside the basement doors.  Later on he got a 4x7 dump trailer and that's what's he's been using ever since.  Occasionally he will leave a couple runners and a stack of blocks in the woods, depending on where it is and how easy it is to get to. 

Myself, I've collected 4 years worth of sawmill slabs, pallets, junk wood, blowdowns, stuff off of power line cutting, highway department clearing, clean stumps and stuff I've scrounged.  I don't have a good way of dealing with any of this.  I have a small tractor with a bucket and forks, and a couple good saws, and a splitting maul and wedges.  I have piles of random wood everywhere, everything from tree-length to 4-6' long stuff to split rounds.    It is my intent, when I finally get a handle on this mess and burn through everything that's been accumulated, to build a decent woodshed that will hold 4-6 cords, make separate covered stacks for overflow (I'm figuring on 8-10 cords a year), have a Gator that I can tow a small trailer.  I like to cut small stuff, 4" and smaller, to 6-8' lengths and pile them for gang cutting later.  Anything bigger I prefer to block up in the woods and put in a big pile near the wood boiler, and I can go out and split by hand for a while until I get tired.  I think I'll need a log splitter someday, but no hurry.

[Tom]

Wives can provide those if you have the time and the money.  If not you might have to buy one. ...logsplitter, I mean. 

[SwampDonkey]

I just finished stacking 7.5 cords of hard maple, beech and yellow birch firewood for this winter. We used to cut our own on the farm with an old skidder or tractor. Since we sold the farm and the stumpage we have been purchasing it. This year the price is $200 cut, split, delivered and when you consider furnace oil would be as much (total cords) for one tank full, firewood is way cheaper and a lot warmer. 

If you have a neighbor with a work horse, maybe he can cut and yard your wood out short bolts or tree length? Just a thought.

[cuttingman423]

I just got started in the firewood  for heating and became partners with a friend in the firewood business in January this year.  We have one main location and a few others for  getting firewood  and the main location has been sitting for 2 years and is ready to burn and has no bark on it so we just cut it to length for stove or cut logs about 4-5 ft and haul them to his place and process there. As for stacking   we just stack standard cord but go 5- 6 ft tall instead of 4ft  and its stacked on wood supports i get from work for free .  As much has we wish we could afford  some other equipment for handling the wood we make due with my 1985 F150 3/4 ton and his new F150 and trailer(Some day hope to get skid loader with grapple)  as for splitting he has a splitter thats over 20 yrs old and  it still splits like the day it was new  i think its a 5 or 6 HP Briggs  and the only  thing its required is oil changes and filling the gas.

[WildDog]

WildDog,is this your land.Why was the trees windrowed up?100 piles is alot

Cfarm we bought the place nearly 5 yrs back, the timber piles are from when it was cleared many years ago, the old guys ring barked the trees with axes then years later they were bulldozed into piles. The 1st couple of years we had fires going in the paddocks most of the winter wasting the usefull firewood, now I'm taking things slower and picking through it.

Tom I managed to find some more time, my new up and coming log splitter turned 2yrs old on the weekend, we called him Angus.

[Tom]

I like that name.  Angus!   It has a ring to it.  I have a friend named Angus.

You'll have to show us some pictures of Angus as he grows.   Sounds like a might log splitter to me.