Premium Firewood:How Much Extra Work is it Worth?

[ppkgmsy]

You're asking the great philosophical question that firewood scroungers ponder over.

 

[zogger]

Exactly @benp !!! The people south and east of us get all of the good wood and not much of a winter compared to what we get!

I should clarify also. You could walk a tractor in there to skid logs out but a wagon probably wouldn't make the trip. ATV with small trailer would work also.

I'm trying to find someone who wants to do some bartering for a used wheeler. Will see what happens.

A lawnmower with the deck off of it/rotten/gone and some weight on the back will pull a wagon. Proly cheaper to find.

 

[DFK]

I will confess...
We are blessed with plenty of "premo" firewood.
Oak, Hickory, Black Locust. All within 3 miles of the house.
If we wanted to drive 10 miles we could cut more Osage than we could ever burn.

David

 

[svk]

A lawnmower with the deck off of it/rotten/gone and some weight on the back will pull a wagon. Proly cheaper to find.

I should clarify. Most of my home turf is rock farm. Here's a shot overlooking the 40 next to the one where most of the oak is. The little rocks (barely visible under the grass) are enough to hang up a lawn tractor. It looks relatively smooth from on top of this hill but trust me it isn't when you get down there.

 

[zogger]

I should clarify. Most of my home turf is rock farm. Here's a shot overlooking the 40 next to the one where most of the oak is. The little rocks (barely visible under the grass) are enough to hang up a lawn tractor. It looks relatively smooth from on top of this hill but trust me it isn't when you get down there.

View attachment 430171

Ya, more ground clearance and toughness needed for sure.

They should start making the quadractor again, that was a slick machine.

 

[svk]

I had a Polaris Sportsman 500 6x6. Sold it cheap when I moved to Florida for work. Kick myself on that one daily.

 

[user 122190]

Depends on my general well being and needs. My first year here, I had little nothing, so I went to great lengths. Now, with my surplus on hand, I'm very selective.

 

[Whitespider]

The little rocks (barely visible under the grass) are enough to hang up a lawn tractor. It looks relatively smooth from on top of this hill but trust me it isn't when you get down there.

My little lawn tractor/hauler/skidder could get in there... might haft'a pick 'n' choose the route, but it's been worse places than that.
And even if it gets hung up or stuck, the winch on the front will drag it on through (first pic is pre-winch).

 

[svk]

Pretty slick. Heck that might even be able to skid full length redwoods

 

[Swamp Yankee]

Ask yourself,

If you skid the wood out in lengths, can you safely leave them, or will they disappear?
Also, any idea as to how much wood is there and the size (dia.) of the logs to be pulled? Obviously the bigger the logs the faster the tally increases per trip.
How much time will it take getting the equipment to and from the site?
How much wood do you think you could skid per hour with an ATV or small tractor?

If you can come up with answers to these questions it may help with the decision. When it comes to firewood for both my own use and to sell, logistics is always a PITA. That's why I buy treelength, faster processing time and my raw material costs are fixed. Not to say I'm against dropping and skidding out gravy because I do when I have a chance.

Good luck with the head scratching, let us know what you decide, and why.

Take Care

Take Care

 

[svk]

Ask yourself,

If you skid the wood out in lengths, can you safely leave them, or will they disappear?
Also, any idea as to how much wood is there and the size (dia.) of the logs to be pulled? Obviously the bigger the logs the faster the tally increases per trip.
How much time will it take getting the equipment to and from the site?
How much wood do you think you could skid per hour with an ATV or small tractor?

If you can come up with answers to these questions it may help with the decision. When it comes to firewood for both my own use and to sell, logistics is always a PITA. That's why I buy treelength, faster processing time and my raw material costs are fixed. Not to say I'm against dropping and skidding out gravy because I do when I have a chance.

Good luck with the head scratching, let us know what you decide, and why.

Take Care

Take Care

If I skidded it to the road it would disappear if left unattended longer than overnight. It's roughly 3/4 mile from my cabin on a logging road so the most sensible thing would be to load rounds in the atv trailer and bring back to the cabin or drag log length to the logging road then load rounds in the truck/trailer. I'd favor rounds all the way because I hate messing with dirty wood and that's also tougher on the skidding vehicle.

It's all pin/red oak with the largest being 14". Lots of 8-10" stuff which is primo for my use as they do not even need splitting for the boiler or two to three whacks for perfect sauna wood. I'd say there's easily 3 cords back there and probably more as the recent logging operation has caused formerly deep woods trees to now be field edge trees causing more to tip over.

At this point I'd just bring them out when a buddy brought up a wheeler this fall. I don't have an estimate of cords per hour as I'm always wrong with those calculations lol.

 

[sawjunky23]

My little lawn tractor/hauler/skidder could get in there... might haft'a pick 'n' choose the route, but it's been worse places than that.
And even if it gets hung up or stuck, the winch on the front will drag it on through (first pic is pre-winch).

View attachment 430213 View attachment 430214

I really like the brake rotor wheel weights....very good idea.

 

[Whitespider]

I really like the brake rotor wheel weights...

LOL
Those are from a Ford Motor Company recall... Taurus/Sable front rotors if I recall correctly. One day I had the rear wheels/tires at our dealership putting tubes and fluid in them. One of the wheels was sitting on a bench, one of the guys set a pair of those recall rotors on it (just to get them out'a his way)... they friggin' fit perfectly‼ And the rest is history...

*

 

[NSMaple1]

If I skidded it to the road it would disappear if left unattended longer than overnight. It's roughly 3/4 mile from my cabin on a logging road so the most sensible thing would be to load rounds in the atv trailer and bring back to the cabin or drag log length to the logging road then load rounds in the truck/trailer. I'd favor rounds all the way because I hate messing with dirty wood and that's also tougher on the skidding vehicle.

It's all pin/red oak with the largest being 14". Lots of 8-10" stuff which is primo for my use as they do not even need splitting for the boiler or two to three whacks for perfect sauna wood. I'd say there's easily 3 cords back there and probably more as the recent logging operation has caused formerly deep woods trees to now be field edge trees causing more to tip over.

At this point I'd just bring them out when a buddy brought up a wheeler this fall. I don't have an estimate of cords per hour as I'm always wrong with those calculations lol.

The beauty of a 4x4 ATV is it can go almost anywhere, with little impact. They're not that wide. I scrounge mostly windfalls. I have a walking beam trailer, and a Wallenstein/Surge Master splitter. The trailer has a ball on the back so I can pull them both, B-train like. If the windfalls are small enough that I can get it on the trailer in 8-10' lengths, I load up the trailer & cut to length right on the trailer when I get it to where I'm going with it, sawbuck style. If it's too big for that, I just tow the splitter right to the tree & split right there, tossing into the trailer (it has removeable sides) right off the splitter. Then stack to final stacks when I get the trailer to where I'm going with it. If the wood lot isn't close & you need to trailer everything to the woods, the ATV stuff is also smaller & easier to do that with than something bigger like a tractor.

Not a pro setup by any means, but a pretty good firewood scrounging one.

 

[Jere39]

Even though I have relatively easy access on my own property, I've never wanted to create skidding trails. I spent some time looking for a well used, but serviceable SCUT and found the owners mostly just kept them, the ones who wanted to sell were very, very proud of their used tractors. Then, like a stroke of luck, I ran into a 10 year old full time 4x4 ATV cheap. It has been a real worker for me. No skidding trails worn down to dirt means no erosion. Narrow track means I can meander through the woods to the next standing dead Red Oak I find. 8 times out of 10, I process where it drops and haul the wood with a mid-sized lawn tractor cart behind the ATV. The remaining 2 times, I built a log arch and pull logs up to 20" diameter and 20' length to a more convenient process place. This is usually if the tree fell on a rock pile, or in the briars and I just wanted a more convenient place to process.

The ATV is pretty good in the snow, especially if I keep the snow packed down. If we get 20" of snow, I'm kind of shut down for a week or so till it sags, settles, and I can re-pack it. Last winter we had some serious snow crust, and I cobbled together a sledge of sorts to haul the bigger rounds to a more convenient place to process.



My bottom line, and I am a very small time operation, but I was able to process a couple extra cord the first winter and paid for it in no time.

I like Oak, I usually process as little birch, maple, even beech as possible and keep it on a mixed wood pile I offer for the hard luck guys who want to pay me Tuesday for a load of firewood today.

That is a nice tree line you have back there. With an ATV you can scout out the best trees, mark them and keep track of the natural comings and goings at the same time. Maybe find a good place to fill the freezer too.

 

[rarefish383]

I really like the brake rotor wheel weights....very good idea.

I didn't notice them till you said something. Not bad. I was just getting ready to throw two in my buddy's scrap metal bin. Now I'll have to check the bolt pattern, Joe.

 

[nk14zp]

How about some long rope and a small fetching arch and skid it out with whatever you haul the wood in.

 

[c5rulz]

I bought an ATV under the guise of helping cut firewood. After using it once it was more bother than it was worth. It's a blast on the trails though!

I've gotten spoiled by my logger buddies. Takes 3-4 min. a load.

 

[svk]

Working on some bartering to get a wheeler for a few days this fall.

 

[spike60]

This is a good topic Steve. Answer depends in part on what you have for "other wood" in comparison to the oak. If other hardwoods, they aren't that far down the ladder from the oak, so it might not be worth too much extra effort. But if softwoods, then I'd think the oak is enough of an improvement that it's worth the extra work. Some of the burn time differences you mentioned are pretty significant.

It's similar to the different ways we'll look at hard to reach wood based on our supply situation. If we've got plenty of wood, then it's easy to say, "the heck with it, I don't need it that bad." But if your supply is marginal, your not going to think about the extra effort, your just going to grab the wood cause you need it.