I felled three Ash today and bucked up two of them. Picture 0302 is the first Ash, 0307 is the second, 0308 is after I cleaned up the area, 0311 is the third Ash and 0312 is what I'll have to buck up of the third Ash. It's time I start splitting and stacking the Ash off the backhill first and then the Ash from today.
looks like some premium quality ash! Was the bark staying on tight? Getting scarce to find any like that around these parts.
How extensive is the EAB damage up there? The few living ash trees ive seen are putting out shoots from the main trunk which is a sign of their last ditch effort to survive. Trees just starting to bud out around here.
I haven't seen it here but the Ash trees are being felled in our county since they found it north of here over a year ago on the Akwesasne reservation. I think Ogdensburg NY was one of the first places up along the St.Lawrence River to start taking down the Ash years back, the DEC figures the EAB up here came from Canada. I still have more on the backhill behind the house that hopefully will come down in the fall.
Wondering if you ever take the tractor back to lift those trees to make easier bucking up the logs? But I don't remember if you have pallet forks or not.
I do have a set of pallet forks but that trail is only wide enough for the Rhino but even if the tractor could fit back there, the Ash trees are up far enough on the hill that the tractor would be useless. I could've dragged them down with the tractor from the topside of the gully but that would've meant more felling of some tall Basswood. I only have one Ash left that needs bucking up on that hill so it won't be that bad.
This is from todays splitting, all the stacked Ash is from the first tree I felled with about five more nice size rounds left. I'm not sure if it will fill out that two face cord stack but it still gave us some good firewood. I still have three more Ash on the backhill that need s & s along with the three up top.
There's a Cherry that looks like it may have some rot going on about three feet up, if that was gone then I could start using the tractor. I'll do some poking around that area of the tree this week.
I split two more loads and almost finished the stack, I never reset the t-post on the right side of the stack so I'll take some of the Ash off of that end and reset the stakes near the end of the splits. I did get the next stack ready (two face cord) and then moved the splitter out of the gully to a new area. I loaded up the tub with a load of smaller rounds with the intent on s/s them but the wind gust were pretty good so I called it a day. Picture 0331 is the splitter beam after I cleaned it off with some WD-40 Degreaser, 0332 is the first load, 0333 is the flagpole from the stacking area, 0334 & 0335 is the punky Cherry that is in the middle the gully I don't think I'll touch, 0336 are some damaged birch that need felling (bent over) , 0338 is a load of rounds heading out to the new splitting area at 0339.
It's sort of like a pine in the wind, it bends but doesn't break. It's a lightweight flagpole but that was what the wife wanted. I'll check the base too, the frost could've pushed the frontside up which would make it lean back some. I did more s & s today of the rest of the rounds from the backhill, once the stack I started today is finished we'll have a total of 53 face cord up. I still have one Ash on the backhill that needs bucking up and another three up top, one of those will need to be bucked up to. I'm hoping for another two face cord for a total of 55.
Since the area where these rounds was pretty tight, I decided to haul the rounds out (3 loads) to the new splitting area and stack it. Attached are some pictures, near the end of my stacking the wife came out with our dog (Australian Kelpie) we rescued from a kill shelter in another state through Helping Hounds out of Syracuse about three years ago. Once this last stack is finished. we'll have 53 face cord up.
