Well that was interesting. I wandered out to my back lot to see what the firewood situation was like. We’ve been getting a lot of windy days and there’s plenty of trees on the ground. We also have a fair amount of standing dead wood. It’s all good and dry for the woodstove.
The plan was to drop some of those dead trees, but it was too windy. It a minute it would go from sunny and calm to a snow squall. You don’t want to be in the middle of cutting down a tree when the wind picks up. I know that from my early years up here at the lake.
I’d been dropping a lot of trees along the power line. It was going really well -until it wasn’t. My last tree was starting to fall in the correct direction. Then the wind came out of nowhere, lifted the tree up and sent it 180 degrees in the opposite direction. The tree collided with the power pole and snapped the top off.
Then I had to make an embarrassing call to the power company. They sent a crew over. The first thing the guy said was, “Who’s the lumber Jack?”
“That would be me,” I sheepishly said.
They fixed the pole and didn’t even charge me. They don’t give out any free power poles these days. One embarrassing encounter with the power company is enough, thank you very much.
With the conditions in mind I settled for dragging already downed limbs to the house. A man has to know his limitations.
-Sixbears
You do know , the term... seasoned firewood ?
ReplyDeleteIt is why wood cutting should be done during the summer and stored for a year in a dry place.
Otherwise,.'..not nearly the btu output. Water content is halved this way.
I've got enough storm damaged dead dry wood that I've gotten lazy. It is seasoned -just needs to be cut up. The trick is to cut it up before it rots on the ground.
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