We've been heating this little place here with wood since 2007. When we installed our (used) wood boiler, we figured with ten acres of woods out back, we could probably manage our 'woodlot' well enough to never have to buy firewood. We just weren't sure if we would be able to never have to cut down a living tree in order to heat the house in years to come.
Well, we're most of the way through our eleventh heating season, and I can proudly say that so far, we have not cut one live tree off our property in order to feed the wood boiler.
How have we managed that? Several ways.
First, the neighboring farmer told us that we could have any tops in his woods that were left from when he'd had some selective timbering done in the early 2000's. He really hated for that good wood to just lay on the ground and rot. So DH, for the first few years, cut up tops and piled them up to dry. By the time he'd cleaned up all the usable timbering detritus, the same farmer gave permission to also cut up and haul off any blow-downs from storms. That project has been ongoing, as the farmer's woods mature and become more open, and more gusty wind storms topple more aging trees.
The second way we've not had to cut any live trees at this little place here, is to clean up our own blow-downs. Every ash on the property fell victim to the emerald ash borer when it ate it's way through mid-Michigan in the early part of this century. We've left all those dead ash standing (they don't rot as quick that way), and as they become storm damage there is a pretty steady source of 'new' dead fall.
A third way we've taken care of our wood needs is to clean up storm damage of family and friends. From time to time, DH has also been called upon to take care of a nuisance tree or one otherwise in a place where the homeowner no longer wants to have a large tree.
From time to time, he's been lucky enough to happen upon someone--either listed on Craigslist, or a friend of a friend--who is clear cutting a chunk of their property and has no need for the wood, or who wishes to have someone do the clearing for them in exchange for the wood. Since DH loves to use his chainsaw, he finds it fun to spend a day or an entire weekend cutting and retrieving the wood in those situations. We once got an entire heating season worth of oak that way.
In recent years, some of the trees on our north line have been dying off. Last winter, when the ground was frozen, DH cut down three and hauled them through the hay field with the tractor. Since then, we've noticed there are about a handful more dead ones out there in the fence line. Those were going to be this winter's project, once the ground was good and hard and the hay field wouldn't be dug up and rutted by the weight of the large trees being drug through it. Except that the way the weather, family issues, and DH's work and travel schedule ended up being, those trees didn't get cut in December, nor in January, and now its late February, with the frost laws all ready on the roads (several weeks early) and our ground quite soggy and thawing. I guess we'll have to put off those trees until next winter now. They will stay good for quite a number of years as standing deadwood.
Other than DH's trusty chainsaw (a Stihl MS271 with a 20" bar), our next most valued wood harvesting item is the wood splitter we bought used back in 2008. It handles just about everything we've attempted to put through it, with the exception of some oak stumps. Those were too hard and twisted (near the root) for the 22 tons of force of the splitter to crack. So far, we haven't found a chunk of wood that has been too big; if DH can manage to maneuver a 36" diameter hunk of oak or black cherry to the splitter, the splitter has reduced it to nice wedges with no problem.
As we look to the end of another season of stoking the wood boiler (possibly in late March, if the weather continues its warm earlier than normal trend), life with wood heat comes full circle again. Once the ground thaws and dries out in the spring, we'll hook the wood hauler trailer onto the tractor, and haul in the stacked, cut wood that was sawed up in winters past. The hauling will continue through the summer, as time allows. Then, sometime in late summer, we'll pull the splitter over to the pile of wood brought up, and commence to splitting and stacking another winter's worth of heat. Then, sometime in October, DH will light the fire again, reinstating the daily ritual of feeding the wood boiler. And, once all the deer hunting seasons end with the beginning of January, he'll take to the woods again with his chainsaw to cut more downed trees and stack that to age for heating the house roughly a handful of winters from now.
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