officially firewood season has started for me

[sumi]

I have a pile of branches that are waiting to get cut up for burning, but with my still sore wrist it's not happening yet. I'm considering buying a chainsaw for it. Very little of the wood is big enough to need splitting, but I have a nice little hatchet for the job IF my arm allows.

This winter I'm planning to burn mostly coal though. I found some Polish coal @ €14.75 per 40kg (just over 88 lbs) bag! That is really, really cheap. My house is not big and the layout allows me to heat it comfortably with just the wood burning stove.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

That's a great pic!

 

[cabinguy]

Bee What makes me feel good is when I leave for work in the AM after stocking the cabin with wood and stoking the wood stove for DW looking in my rear view mirror seeing the white plume of smoke coming from the chimney.

 

[cabinguy]

I've always loved coming home in the winter time, seeing that little cabin with the smoke coming from the pipe and lights in the window....I can already FEEL the warmth inside before I even get in the house!

Wood heat always makes me feel that way and I think coming home after a hard day's work, moving in and out of the cold and wet, seeing the warmth of the lights and seeing the smoke is one of life's hidden pleasures. People who don't heat with wood really miss out on that kind of heat...there's none like it.

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beautiful pics love the cabin

 

[sumi]

Not sure what they are like over there, Sumi, but here the gas powered splitters don't need oil added all the time...just changed out every once in awhile like most machinery. And they don't really smell bad nor use a lot of gas...I can split quite a huge pile of logs on one tank of gas...and we have an older model of splitter, so I imagine the newer ones are even more fuel efficient.

I meant gas powered chain saws. Thankfully (or unfortunately?) I don't need a splitter at the moment, though that may come in handy in future.

 

[cabinguy]

No machinery or pulleys...just other logs to roll them up on and a system of ropes that we pulled. All the cabins he built were done without any use of electricity or machinery beyond a chainsaw to cut the logs and score the notches so they could be knocked out with the ax.

On the second cabin, Mom got in the way of the ropes when one of the logs slipped and started coming back down the skid logs...caught her at the back of her neck and face planted her quick and hard into the ground. Remarkably she wasn't the least bit injured, though it was a shock and it hurt at the time.

That's true WV grit "Montani Semper Liberi"

 

[Mini Horses]

Sumi, I believe her electric chainsaw is a Works. I'll find out for you. Yes, the cost of gas/oil is a lot really. This one is reasonably quiet, just far more powerful than one would expect. The batteries charge faster than many but, she keeps them charging on days the get heavy use.

We try to pull fallen limbs, small trees back to house for later cut/split. Some days we've gone into woods and cut larger ones into manageable lengths, loaded into tractor front end loader and make trips that way. Lot of work.

 

[wyoDreamer]

Here in northern Wisconsin, most of the firewood is either oak or maple. I love the smell of the smoke from an oak fire, it brings back memories of hot chocolate and cookies in front of the fireplace.
My parents have a neighbor who installed on of those outdoor woodburners furnace thingy's - good-golly, I don't know what he is burning in there but it really stinks. It stinks up the whole neighborhood. Alot of their neighbors have wood fireplaces, so it used to be nice to step outside and catch a wiff of the neighbors fireplace, but not anymore.

Back in Wyoming, we burnt Ponderosa Pine. All beetle killed and standing dead on a neighbors (8 miles down the road) property. We were "helping" her by taking the wood away so she didn't have to worry about a wildfire. the smoke from the pine wasn't too bad either, but the smoke from the elm we bought from Nebraska was not pleasant.

 

[Britesea]

We are expecting our first snowfall this Friday; I'm glad our wood in already in place!

 

[frustratedearthmother]

stupidly too big master bathroom! WHY make it so BIG?

Totally agree! My daughter's master bath is larger than my master bedroom (and it's not that small lol). I don't want to heat and cool a room that gets used just a few times a day...