Gathering the Firewood

[GuglioLS]

This is how we go firewood cutting -

Here is my wife Esther and I getting the saws and gas all loaded up in the ATV. Esther drives the ATV with all the saws, gas, oil and refreshments. I drive the tractor with the large trailer.



Here she is putting in all the goodies we will need to live through getting all the wood. She stores it in the front trunk of the ATV which has quite a bit of storage space.



Larry

[GuglioLS]

Here we are one by one getting ready to cross the Arroyo which is about 10 feet deep. One of our twin daughters - Katie is at the other end of the camera.



Larry

[GuglioLS]

Here I am at the bottom of the Arroyo. I cut the banks out many years ago at an angle to make a ramp down into it, then a ramp up out the other side. The arroyo floods frequently during the monsoon and the banks of it are quite steep.



And off we go to climb a steep hill that leads to where all our wood is.



Larry

[GuglioLS]

Here we are climbing the hill, t's steeper than what the pictures show. Going up is pretty easy as you can't see behind you nor how far your going up. Its about a 300' rise in elevation.
What looks like the crest of the hill in the picture is only an illusion. Once your up there it keeps going up. Eventually it does level off, so it is much easier and safe to work when you get to the top.




Larry

[GuglioLS]

It took me about 2 hours to cut all the wood to fill that dump trailer. I was cutting with the saw while Esther carried off the logs and loaded the trailer. While I was farting around cutting off limbs, she would gather sticks laying around for kindling and loaded it into the ATV trailer.



So were all loaded and ready to head on down the hill. That is always the scary part.



Larry

[GuglioLS]

We made it down safely and parked our load over by the rest of the wood pile. We are tired so we'll unload it sometime tomorrow.


There are some big-uns in there that need to be split so we will separate those out. Once we get a big pile that needs splitting, I haul out the home made wood splitter, then invite my Dad over, he operates the hydraulic lever while Esther and I feed the splitter. He as a ball doing that.



Larry

[GuglioLS]

Well I could not help myself. This was the very first time we have used the new dump trailer. And I wanted to see if it would lift a real load. I didn't want to dump the wood just lift it a little to check it out. It lifted it like it was empty.

The video is about 1 meg in size so if you have dial-up it's gonna take a bit to view it.



How many of you burn wood in the winter? How do you collect your firewood?

Larry

[GuglioLS]

Here is how I get the wood up onto the back porch then stack it in a wood crib. The house is about 5' above ground plus about a 3 foot rail I have to get over. Here is how I do it:



Before I got my tractor I used to carry all the wood up the stairs in a garbage can, what a PITA. I must have carried 75 cords up those stairs over the years. Man am I glad that's over.

Here's the wood crib. It holds about 3 FEL buckets full, it lasts
almost two weeks.



Larry

[GuglioLS]

Now here is how we get the wood into the house -

From the wood crib into a 55 gallon drum. Are we Red neck hillbillies or what?

I got the barrel from a food processing place. It used to have peanut oil in it. I cleaned it out real good, painted it gloss black, set it on a wheel platform made for barrels. It has a removable lid that I put hinges on. I painted the lid Gold to match my tractor. ;D



Larry

[GuglioLS]

And here is the final destination of all that wood -

Our stove is a free standing wood heater. It really puts out the heat though. I've had it for 30 years, not sure how old it is - I bought it used for 50 bucks.

We burn Piñon, it's a fairly hard pine with lots of pitch, it burns very hot, and Juniper - similar to Cedar which is aromatic.



The stove was made by King Stove and Range Company located in Sheffield Alabama - I wonder if they are still in business.

There is a temperature controlled thermostat that controls the airflow going into the burner. It is adjustable. Open up the thermostat and it burns real hot, set it midway and it will actually regulate the burn rate of the wood. The airflow valve opens / closes automatically with the temperature of the stove.



It holds about 3 weeks of ashes ~ 10 gallons which is real nice. So I don't have to empty it to often. You just open the door and shovel them out into the ash bucket. It does not have a grate or ash pan, it's real simple.

Larry