Free Oak? Yes, Please!

 On Friday afternoon, DH found that he had no work meetings scheduled.  And then, he was contacted by a friend who lives near where DH works, and was told that there was free oak firewood available. A tree service had been contracted to remove some very nice, very large old oak trees from a neighboring homeowner's property and that if DH could come that afternoon while they were there, the tree service would even load it onto his trailer for him.

Well, you don't have to ask DH twice if he wants free oak.  It makes great firewood, lots of BTUs for those cold mid-winter days (and nights!).  He quickly decided to take the rest of the day off, hook up our 16' trailer, and head over to where that tree service was giving away wood.

When he got there, the guy in charge loaded the trailer up with some huge chunks of tree trunk, as well as some 'smaller' logs --about 12"-18" across-- from limbs, and told DH that if he wanted more, the guy would be working for several more hours trying to finish the job that night so he didn't have to come back on the weekend to do it.  So DH picked up his nearby buddy, brought buddy and the wood back to this little place here, and they unloaded that trailer with the tractor, a chain and the log tongs as fast as they could and headed back for more.

By the time they had the trailer reloaded, the tree guy was just about finished, so DH knew he would be gone by the time DH drove the 40ish miles home in after work traffic, unloaded, and drove back a third time.  So he thanked the guy, gave him his phone number and said that we'd gladly take more oak if the guy had future similar jobs in the area.

I had a late dinner waiting when DH got home the second time (buddy didn't come with DH as he had family plans for the night), and then I manned the log tongs while DH operated the tractor to unload the second load of wood.  It was dusk by the time we were done, but I took a picture anyway before DH moved the truck and trailer.  I wanted them for scale so anyone who views the photo can get an idea of just how much wood was in those two loads.  It's quite a large pile.

Here's a picture in the light of day on Saturday morning.  Without the truck behind it, it doesn't look quite a big, but it is.

This pile we'll let age until next summer before we cut, split and stack it.  It's a good start on firewood for the 2026/2027 heating season.  Gotta love free oak.