I spent time tonight bucking up this downed Beech, the first 4 rounds had a bunch of punk but the middle was good but after that it was all good. The trunk (pic 8095) sounded like it had some good wood so tomorrow I'll spend a little time on the grinder and then on Saturday grab it.
The Punky stuff gives the woodpeckers something easy to work on to find some dinner Looks to be ready to burn dry, just came down recently ?
This Beech was clean, the first 4 rounds had punk but no dirt. The Maple last night had some dirt on it from pulling it down the hill, that was tough on the chain. The boss loves the Beech so she was some what happy when I told her.
That's great that most of it was good. A little punk is ok. I can't wait to crack open the 2 year ago cut up beech that I had in my woods. I was amazed that it was all solid.
I think Beech trees are cool. I've only got a few of them on my property. One of them, in fact, is my favorite tree on the property. Right after I bought the land, I remember admiring how awesome that tree looked. I was sitting in my treestand one morning, and the sun was shining through those golden leaves which never seem to drop. It felt surreal. I finally had a chunk of ground to call my own. No, I will never cut that tree. There aren't too many trees that are safe in my presence, but that one is.
Nope I don't have any beech; wish I had some. My list of "what I would like in my stacks to try" is pretty long: black locust, osage, beech, ash (seriously, never burned any), hard maple, hickory (only burned a couple pieces), birch, ... and all the western species.
I absolutely love beech, my favorite wood to process. Looking forward to burning it and seeing how well it heats the house.
Beech is suffering from "Beech bark disease" (I think it's called). Beech should have a smooth bark and it's not hard to tell the one's that are affected. Cut 'em!! Between that, the EAB (emerald ash borer) and something like the "Asian long horned beetle" that I forget what tree it attack's, makes me wonder about how our wood's are going to fair in the future. That Beech makes great high btu's firewood but get it before it starts to get punky.
I can easily relate Frank. We had one of those too. Too darned big to put a tree stand in that is held with a strap and too big to even get a cable or chain around. I used to climb up and just stand on a limb or sit if I got tired. The limbs were as big as many trees. But, it finally came tumbling down. There are several of its kids standing around there now.
I dropped what was left of the Beech (pic 8103) after I bucked that up I rolled the rounds down the hill (it took 6 different rolls to get them at the splitting area) after I split that I ran around splitting some Sugar Maple (pic 8110) and hopefully Sugar Maple in pic 8111. I split the worst off of some of the Beech rounds, plenty of "gooder" wood in that pile.
