the swamp aka the wood pile..

Wanted to try and work in the wood pile today and at least an inch of standing water if not more in some spots. If it keeps this up, I probably won't be able to process anything till the freeze hits.
Not all the yard where I process is like that, but mostly..

So instead, it's stack sweeping day.
a pic of the soup and a pic of the soot.
It's mostly ash under that pile of soot.
I like to leave some ash in there at the end of the year so when I sweep the stack
it falls onto the ash and cleans up a little easier, so I think..
I was a bit lazy and forgot to sweep most of the ash out at the end of the season though.
That was 2 years of soot since I didn't sweep last fall. I burned almost non-stop last winter.

 

Yep, this is gettin old. I left ruts in my yard yesterday getting my dump trailer hooked up & ready for a small tree job today. For reference my property is 2 1/2 acres on 75' deep sand & gravel knob. Theoretically that should not be possible to make mud up here, but it did. Somewhere in China my water's gotta be dripping on somebody.

 

I only wish I had some sand.


I've got between 6-12 inches of topsoil sitting on top of clay.
Everything is a soggy mess. Every step issues a squish.


I've actually got little rivulets of water running down through parts of the yard. It's ridiculous at this point.

Eh, it's mud season. Pretty soon it'll freeze.


After that, it'll be a new mud season.


Yep 4 seasons..
Freezing season, Mud season, Hot season, Mud season

 

Looks like you are doing it right if that's all that came out of the flue, Pines. Good work! Sorry about the swamp - part of my lot is that way, too. Mrs Papi brought me home a pair of rubber boots last year to load the boiler with in spring thaw time, since part of the trip from stack #2 to boiler goes through the swamp. They're cheapies from Tractor Supply, but they keep the dogs dry.

 

Im just glad its startin to dry out somewhat....reguardless...we wouldnt have any problem gettin into any of our wood.
Theres 2 cart loads in the garage....super dryin...keeps like this..wont need a fire until November.

 

pretty much the same here. Plus when they excavated this property, they dozed it low in the middle like a bowl.

 

OMG, at first I thought that was a corner of your basement.



My driveway is gravel and being too close to the ocean the ground rarely stays frozen for more than a week or two in a Winter. I can make quite a mess of a gravel driveway plowing with the tractor bucket instead of the snow blower.

 

Yea I could see how that would look like mold hah, no basement here though.
Where I work, is all gravel.. I understand the pain.

 

I hear you guys. My yard is the same way. I'm on straight clay and it's terrible. We got a storm last night that put down about 2 inches in an hour just to add to the muck. I have been spared of most of the torrential rains this summer. Most went just east or south of me but its getting real old seeing how bad some people have had it.

 

this is true, some folks in north carolina probably still have a river in their yards, if their house isn't still under water.

 

I know right! And from what I've been watching with this hurricane coming up out of the Gulf it looks like a lot of NC and SC are gonna get dumped on again. It's just terrible.

 

If I could do it all over again I would build my house on a 6 foot mound and my entire yard would be gravel.

 

That alleviates the mowing.

 

Even gravel can get soupy.
I live atop a gravel glacial till hill.

 

Well I've moved to some higher ground and processed some of my really old stuff.
Some of it is borderline usable. A good part of it is ready to go as is.
The splitter made short work of all my old stuff.
Now the fun begins with the stacking, my least favorite part of the job.
Once I get this mess cleaned up, onto the next piles.

 

Get some wood chips from a tree service? I chip a bunch of tops each spring and build roads and landing areas with them. Untreated chips last about a year under abuse and make nice soil. If it’s your lawn...... well I don’t know.

 

This happened last weekend due to all the rain we have been getting.
Kind of sad but I'll have some good wood in 4 years.
Once the ground freezes up more I'm going to start working on it.
I think at least, might be a little tricky.

 

I don't think I've ever seen an oak tree go over due to mushy water soaked ground. Snap off because of stump rot in the wind, often. Wow.

 

I don't believe I have either, Pines all the time.

 

I believe it was sometime last year that this red oak came over by the roots. Haven't gotten to it yet.