Earlier this year we had several trees brought down in the south/south east end of the clearing due to many being dead or dying. These came to be known as the Fallen trees as they were brought down then stacked roughly at the edge of the woods so I can dispose of them as I see fit. Slowly but surely I cut up the detritus, burning up branches and other material that I didn't want to save while stacking small sections I cut up so I can further cut them up later on when I get a free moment.
Now that we're at a point where I'm going to be working on the 65 Mustang and the truck frame swap project, I need to move this huge pile of pre-cut firewood so I can have room to maneuver the Ranger frame in order to bring it over to the spot along the western fence line, along with the 65 Mustang body prior to building the A-frame that will be used to lift the body up to allow me to place it on top of the truck frame. Since there was a lot of wood to be moved and I had already moved several vehicles around, I thought that I could speed things up by using the S10, which was parked right at the eastern fence line, to load up a large batch of the wood then drive it over to the area along the eastern fence, close to where our new firewood staging area is so I can further cut and split the wood and not have to travel too far with the wood via wheelbarrow to get the wood stacked. After having to jump start the S10 and pump up the right front tire that's pretty much shot, I did a quick walk through of the path I would have to take around the eastern and southern ends of the plotted compound to make sure the grounds were hardened enough for me to drive over, especially when the truck's loaded full of wood. After determining everything looked good I drove over to the spot where the wood was piled up and got to work humping the wood, some rather heavy, into the truck until I got a fair amount loaded up before driving back around and parking close enough to the eastern fence and the midway where I can toss off the pieces of wood.
Because the septic system and the field where the runoff is right in the path along the fence going towards the firewood staging site, I could only go as far as the midway at the fence line. Here I ended up just tossing the wood all over the open area around the fence posts on both graveled and grassy ground. Trying not to get too close to the burn pile spot since I don't need any of this wood to spontaneously ignite when I have a good burn going on. Of course I'll probably work from the burn pile out, clearing that wood away first. Also I'll try to clear the wood from the grassy areas as I want to be able to still cut the grass over these areas as it continues to grow around any wood sitting there. Lastly, I want to clear the wood from the areas that are "outside" the fence because as time progresses, if I hadn't already processed all this wood, it will still be here when I start hanging fence panels once again and with this wood here around the fence posts and in the path of the fence, I will be hindered in my progress.
It only took me four runs to get all of the wood transferred to the S10 and moved to the new temporary staging area. As stated its all over the place but still out of the way of the midway so I can still move vehicles around as needed and aside from using the wheelbarrow to move new firewood to the staging area or some gravel, nothing else will really need to be moved back there. Speaking of gravel, I will have to lay some more gravel in order to lay more pallets down as I do stack more wood up since this large stack of wood shall yield a huge amount of wood. I cannot even begin to imagine just how much larger the firewood piles will grow with just this batch of firewood once its processed, even with the new way I've been stacking said wood. Even with all of this wood processed, there is still a matter of the Fallen Trees. There is probably 10x the amount of wood by volume still on the ground in those tree trunks that still need to be further cut and split. The chainsaw will definitely see some work and I'll probably be several chains in before I get all those trees cut up. Not to mention the idea that I will probably run out of room to stack all this wood. I'll probably end up having a whole other staging area for this overflow of wood that I'll be letting dry out as I use the wood from the staging area as it'll be older more seasoned wood. From there I can pick off of the overflow and stack it in the staging area to replace all that's used over the next winter. Either way, I'll have firewood for years. I'll have to possibly take on some other small projects that center around using raw wood, perhaps making charcoal or splitting wood into firestarter sticks or something, who knows. I'll figure out what I want to do and when I do, it'll be posted here for you to see.
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