Last year was a huge effort that netted me 27 cords of firewood. I was off for 5 weeks so I had lots of time to cut, haul, block, split ans stack. Enough for at least 2 years right? Wrong! Of my three different piles of firewood, the one at the trailhead is completely gone, the Sahara desert is completely picked over with maybe a cord of oversized wood left, and I am at the ed of the rows behind the house. On the otherhand, I have moved about 5 cords to the cabin, the most I have ever had there. It is much easier bringing wood in by snowmobile and sled across the frozen lake instead of by rowboat across the lake in the summer.
This year I started March 12 and I decided to concentrate along the section at the Merry-go-round and Weasels Pass trails. There is some relatively flat land here and I plan to clearcut and put in a wildlife pasture here.
Cutting was much easier as I could drive up to the trees with the ATV, set the tracks overnight and have hard snow to walk on the next day. Cutting was much easier. Dragging logs out was simpler too as the Atv could stay on the hardpack trail, just backup to the log and easily drag it out to the yard at the Sahara.
So far I have put in 4 full days and 6 halfdays/evenings. Mic came up one day so far and did a heroic effort cutting trees in the morning (while I dragged them in) and blocking in the afternoon. We have about 60 - 16 footers in the yard which i hope will give me 20 cords. I'll need them all!
April 2 - Mic came up and we blocked about 1/2 of the logs.
April 9 - Mic and I finished blocking. We went through two chains each plus two sharpenings even though we were cutting on the snow. I bought a chain sharpener in Florida when I picked my Pop up and drove back. It works great.
April 16 - Splitting begins! Mic and I load a trailer up with blocks,drive them to the splitter, split, stack and repeat. Each trailer takes about 1 hour and is about 1/2 a cord. We get 6 trailers done, or about 3 cords.
This year I started March 12 and I decided to concentrate along the section at the Merry-go-round and Weasels Pass trails. There is some relatively flat land here and I plan to clearcut and put in a wildlife pasture here.
Cutting was much easier as I could drive up to the trees with the ATV, set the tracks overnight and have hard snow to walk on the next day. Cutting was much easier. Dragging logs out was simpler too as the Atv could stay on the hardpack trail, just backup to the log and easily drag it out to the yard at the Sahara.
So far I have put in 4 full days and 6 halfdays/evenings. Mic came up one day so far and did a heroic effort cutting trees in the morning (while I dragged them in) and blocking in the afternoon. We have about 60 - 16 footers in the yard which i hope will give me 20 cords. I'll need them all!
April 2 - Mic came up and we blocked about 1/2 of the logs.
April 9 - Mic and I finished blocking. We went through two chains each plus two sharpenings even though we were cutting on the snow. I bought a chain sharpener in Florida when I picked my Pop up and drove back. It works great.
April 16 - Splitting begins! Mic and I load a trailer up with blocks,drive them to the splitter, split, stack and repeat. Each trailer takes about 1 hour and is about 1/2 a cord. We get 6 trailers done, or about 3 cords.