I’ve been wanting this one...

I’ve had my eye on this standing dead elm for a couple years. I know the owner and have cut quite a bit of wood on his ranch in the past, so I didn’t think permission would be a problem. This is in his yard in town. The problem is it leans towards his house and propane tank. Well, last weeks wind storm snapped it off. Landed on the propane tank with no damage, and well short of the house. He was just pulling up as I was going past and spotted it. I asked him if he would like me to clean it up. Of course he said yes.
I didn’t think to get a picture of the approximately 30ft top that snapped off, but that’s the wood in the back of the pickup.
All of the standing trunk is in the pickup box trailer. I drove the 4wheeler over there, but by the time I got the trunk bucked in to 18” rounds my helper (granddaughter) was getting cold. So we didn’t split any of the trunk wood. Just noodled it into barely manageable chunks and loaded it.
30” across the stump.
The owners kids had a pretty cool little fort/ shelter built at the base
Here’s the pics in no particular order

 

That’ll keep ya warm!! Nice grab!

....and, que the elm haters

 

Sweet tree fort!

 

Sandhillbilly hows the elm split for ya? I tried splitting elm once...

 

Missed this last night. Nice score! Lots of noodling, but lots of good wood there. Love that old trailer! Which saw did the work?

 

That will pay off! Elm is great firewood, but you know that.

 

Me too. I split elm about once a week. No problem.

 

346xp, 266se, and 181se. I think I ran 5 tanks of gas through the 181. Eating noodles made it thirsty!

 

I have a 35 ton dirty hands tools splitter, so I get along pretty well. Standing dead is pretty dry usually in the top 1/3. Crotches are tough and I’ll end up with quite a few uglies in this score. But I’ll take those to the shop where I work. Standing dead elm makes up probably 75% of my wood

 

You really helped him with cleaning up his yard, and he helped you with lots of firewood.

 

Thats right those are older saws and get poor "gas" mileage. That 181 mustve chowed through that elm.

 

No pics??? You holding out on us? Inquiring hoarders wanna see!

 

Nah. I just pick at 2 big piles of rounds about once a week. I have two processing areas on my property. Here’s one of them. The pile goes about 40 feet to the right still. Wish I would have taken a better pic before the snow buried it. I took this pic when it was warmer. It’s buried in snow now. The piles are about 20% elm I’d say. Elm is easy to come by here. I split and burn a ton of it.

 

Nice PA there CL! Nice pic too. How much snow is it buried under now? Will you still split with snow cover?

 

Thanks, Brad! It’s under about a foot right now. My firewood making definitely slows down this time a year. But I go out every now and then and dig out some rounds to split and stack. Just to keep the juices flowing in my hydro. If I have decent enough footing, I’ll go smash a few with my maul.