More chainsawing logs...

Back to the woods yesterday to process more logs...

As usual, we took a few sacks from the older section of the store back home:

The other side of the store is now full, so that's about 1/4 of the wood needed for next winter now ready. We're definitely ahead compared to last year!

When we stopped for a short break, a Pheasant came wandering past, thinking he was invisible as always...

We left the bird feeder topped up again, as it had been emptied over the last week.

This bit of the wood's not looking very green yet - the sun needs to get a bit higher to start warming the ground there. That will come soon enough though...

Mike

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More snow in the woods!

It's times like this I'm glad we have a Land Rover Defender (the times when I'm not are when it breaks down). Here's the view in the woods today:

The roads getting there had some snow on them, but not a great deal, though we did stop to help some people move a crashed car out of the middle of the road! Nobody hurt, they'd just gone straight on at a corner and hit a telegraph pole, breaking one of the wheels pretty much off! We managed to lift/bounce the car out of the road.

Here's a video taken as we drove through the woods:

We weren't felling today, just collecting logs and processing some more to fill up the store. We've burned about half a store's worth now, and the other half is stored back at home, so we've been refilling it ready for later in the winter.

We loaded our cutting rack twice and stowed all the wood into the shelter:

It's now a bit over half full again, and we've got plenty at home too.

The Defender looks funny with a snow drift on the bonnet:

As the heat from the engine melted some of the snow, the water ran down and made icicles - a sure sign that the air temperature was sub-zero!

We put out some food for the birds, and this Robin came along pretty quickly:

We heard these geese before we saw them. They were heading north, presumably to somewhere they hope to find food...

We've got plenty more year-old logs stacked up and covered:

and over in Sweep Wood there's freshly cut logs, waiting for winter 2012/13:

We went for a wander around the woods, where snow had stuck everywhere it could to the trees:

and even heaped up on top of posts:

The paths through the wood are looking quite picturesque:

The sign for Sweep Wood had a decorative edging of snow:

Here's the path leading through to the area we're coppicing this winter:

Some of the Hazel along it still has a few leaves - it's quite bizarre seeing green leaves with snow on them:

Our work area has a good coating of snow:

Hopefully we'll get to do some more felling next time we visit, if it's not too bitterly cold.

Oh, and we've just been for a walk round Rye, where another couple of inches of snow has now come down, and is still falling!

Mike

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Using a moisture meter to check firewood

People tell you that wood needs to be seasoned before it is burned as fuel, but what does this actually mean?

When a tree is felled in winter, the moisture content of the wood will be over 50%, and even higher if it is felled in summer. By splitting the logs and/or cutting them to short lengths, you can accelerate the rate at which the wood will dry out. You can check how dry it is using a moisture meter. The picture below shows the spikes on the end of my moisture meter - you just jab these into the end of a log and it gives you a reading. Better still, split a log and test what had been the inside of it, to see the moisture content at the centre.

The reason the wood needs to have dried out is that when you put a log into a fire or stove, before it can burn all of the moisture must be driven off, and this uses some of the heat from the fire - so, the wetter the log, the less heat you get out. But there's another problem too - wet wood doesn't burn as cleanly, which is bad from the point of view of pollution, and also can deposit tar in the chimney, potentially creating a fire risk.

So how dry should your wood be before you burn it? This varies from one stove to another, but the moisture content should be 30% at most, and ideally should be 20%. How long it takes to get this dry depends on how the wood is stored. Ideally it should be split as soon as possible, then stored off the ground in a place where air can circulate through it and the rain is kept off it. Drying to 30% should usually happen within a year, and 20% in two years, although in ideal conditions these times can be reduced.

Here's an example of how important it is to split logs. These two logs were both felled about two years ago, and have been freshly sawn from the centre of 2m lengths. The first one was split straight after felling, and the moisture content is just over 20%:

The second one has only just been split, and the moisture content is still over 40% (the meter only reads between 3 and 40%):

The good news is that a short split log like this dries out very quickly in the summer - I checked it again a week later and it had already dropped to about 30%, having been left in the sun.

Mike

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Logs! Lots of logs!

It's been a busy couple of days for me in the wood. Tracy's still teaching this week, so I've been on my own, hauling logs around.

but there's definitely signs of progress:

You'll notice I've stacked logs at the end of the rows in alternate directions - this stops them spilling out sideways.

The really hard work has been fixing the track up though, but it's coming on nicely:

I've also put in a footpath sign at the junction, as since we moved the pile of logs from the end of our ride, we've had numerous lost walkers coming through the wood.


There's still a lot more to do - we need to be able to drive all the way to where we were felling last winter before the end of August!

Mike

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A new improved firewood shelter (part 4)

A brilliant day to be in the woods! Lovely sunshine, but not too hot. Best of all, we've finished the roof on the firewood drying shelter! Andrew dropped in, so we made sure he got his hands dirty, cleaving some chestnut for the roof:
He got the hang of it nicely, but then again he has been practising with a froe making kindling already.
He also gave us a hand moving some logs after I'd cut them up, though some went into the trailer for delivery to a friend in return for a favour they'd done us.
I think the shelter looks pretty good now with its roof complete - all we need to do now is add a gutter for rainwater harvesting!
You might notice an extra support to the left - we thought the cross-bean was sagging a little, so we trimmed down a Y-shaped pole we'd saved nearly three years ago, thinking it would come in useful some time...
The shelter's also a handy place to suspend some birch bark to dry for fire lighting.
You can see the earlier construction of the firewood shelter in part 1, part 2 and part 3.

Mike

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A new improved firewood shelter (part 3)

OK, I know this is taking us for ever, but work has been very busy for the past couple of months! You can see the start of the firewood shelter in part 1 and part 2.

The latest job was to make some walls for it. The walls of a firewood shelter need to keep rain out, but let wind in, so that the wood in there can season. I sharpened some stakes:
then we drove them in along the edges and fitted sticks in between them:
This should let some air blow through while keeping out the rain. We're just doing two walls for now, the third wall (on the near end) will be put in once the store is mostly full - after that we'll get wood in and out through the opening on the left.

Our friend Paul and his daughter Emily came up to help, and Emily drove the land rover through the wood with a pile of logs in the back:
I cut up a few logs in a rack:
and everyone gave a hand loading them into the shelter:
We might build the walls right up to the top later, and we still need to do some more on the roof.

Elsewhere in the wood, it's turning into a bit of a jungle!
and Tracy got some nice pictures of spider webs:
And what were Pete and Tom doing while we were working hard in the wood? They decided that the cage wasn't good enough any more, and that the sofa was the best place for a nap:
Also, Tom (the one with the white face) has learned to turn on our portable radio - a few times now we've gone out and left it on the table, only to find it turned on when we get back! We've caught him in the act since, so we know it's him rather than Pete.

Mike

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