Well Midwinter , you and HolsatiaRedneck aren't going to be the only ones posting on this thread today even if I have to post something lame. So I was driving home from work today and I decided to take a detour to our town dump. Well it's usually bad, but its never been this bad! Where you see the recycle bags it used to be open to driving a car through and the dirt mound was never that narrow. I don't know where they got all this new earth from???...There used to be about a 30 ft. space between the wood refuse and the mountain of dirt to the left. Now its like a big garbage glacier flowed into the narrower space. It's totally impossible to inspect the pile from the broad side now, but you can see how they just pile it all together and though you can see a few logs deep inside, there is no way to get at them. Add to that the mud and fermenting stink puddle (and this is a small one, its usually a lake) it's never really worth the work. So now you know how good you have it at your dump. The dump is in the middle of a little industrial compound with commercial offices and some small factory spaces. Striking out totally at the dump, I decided to take a little drive through the run down development and came upon these train tracks behind one of the buildings. Looks like some time ago there was a little track clearing done and there's a pretty good mix of hardwoods that have been drying for years on the coarse blue stone gravel. This is a great place to spend a Sunday morning with my other car and trailer crate. It's pretty secluded and with the businesses closed for the day I don't think anyone would even know I was there. I took just a few pieces of dry maple for now which I split and currently burning while I write this. Notice the smaller Ryobe chainsaw I keep in this smaller car. Nothing even close to the EGO, but I bought it before they started introducing more powerful saws. Now I keep this one in my wife's car which we use for work and the other I keep in my "hoarder car".
I'm glad you got some maple to throw in the stove. It's good to have a reliable cutting spot where you know you can go when life gets boring. I need one of those. Still too much snow cover now. Your dump looks horrendous! Fermenting puddle lakes, my dump has a few, but used to be much worse. They put down a base of ground asphalt, and it's much better now. Still no wood though, but windy on Monday...
I finally caught a break today! Even better, the kid who was dumping it showed up, and he recognized me- he was the same kid I hired last spring to split wood for me. So...he's going to dump his next load at my house. It's mostly red maple, with a little elm and white cedar mixed in. The wind is picking up, but all I've seen blown down are pine branches.
I think he does tree removal on his own. I don't know if this one was a windfall... he probably cut over the weekend, and is dumping it today.
That could turn into a nice little connection for you. Hope you keep his contact info from when he worked for you.
I told him last spring he could dump wood at my house, but it never happened. We'll see if he shows today. He offered, so I assume he will, but you never know.
Congrats on the score with possibilities for more Midwinter ! Here is all I was able to get on way home from work. Just one quick stop, I figured I would look for any blow down in the small park across the Passaic River from my town. It has lots of aging sycamore trees and I was expecting a bit more on the ground than this, but I guess the trees braved the winds pretty well. Anyway I wasn't going to even post this Molly, but wanted to show you what I do in small dog walking parks like this. As you can see the stuff was rather small and very dry which is actually what I'm after this time of year and so I can drag it to my car. The biggest piece I dragged was about 18 ft. long black locust which I took practically from the rivers edge and the widest diameter wood was 5 inches from a 12 ft. branch of maple. Making up the rest was some short lengths of 2 to 3 inch diameter sycamore. So as you can see I bring the wood to the car when possible to cut to size because I don't want to take my chainsaw far into the park. Plus the car blocks my activity from the curious eyes or what have you which in this case is a pretty busy veterinary clinic parking lot. Anyway, if I have time this week I will check out more small parks on my way home from work. There's gotta be more than this!
How bad was your wind? It's still blowing here. Dry sycamore branches are primo, I love to burn them, but don't find them often. That load is enough for a few days, hey? The tree kid never came today, but it was pretty nasty with the wind, maybe he called it a day. I can always go back to the dump tomorrow and get more red maple, if it hasn't been pushed into the pile too badly.
I had some kind of dead standing barkless tree come down across my road. Someone already moved it to the side, too windy to stop and be out on a road through the woods. I'll scope it tomorrow and either take it or cut it and push it into the woods if someone doesn't do that first.
I never checked the official record or wind gust forecast, but it was blowing a gale for at least 24 hrs and howling seriously for 12 of those hours. Everyone's garbage was blowing around the streets this morning and judging by the sounds and noises I was hearing last night I estimate we had gusts to 60mph with 40 to 45 steady. Yes dry sycamore is great stuff due to being pure wood with no bark or at most a 16th inch of bark skin. We get a lot of it over here since they are pollution tolerant and always a staple in city parks or often lining the roadways and sidewalks. I only take the smaller dry branches since many years ago I discovered the hard way how tough sycamore is to split. It's up there with the worst elm and I took a bunch of logs once from a power company branch clearing. Thought I was in wood scroungers paradise with 2 car loads till I swung my maul at a 12 inch log and poink? then ...poink poink poink F@$% me!!!! Let it season for a year to see if being dry would help and it did, but still took me a while to chew that stuff down and in the end cut a lot of it into burnable disks.
Yup, sycamore splits worse than elm in my experience too. I'll take branches up to 6" in diameter or so, cut them short, and leave them behind the woodstove for a long time. Then burn them as chunks. Nice burning wood though.
I hope it's something good. A lot of pines came down, as usual. Now just as the bolus of Christmas trees has passed, the dump will get clogged up with white pine. Makes it hard to get to the good stuff.
As long as its solid and not sticky it will come home. Theres actually a birch stat snapped right near the oak too. I'm guessing its punky the way it broke, but time will tell.
A common dead barkless tree here is elm and is identified by the radiating spider vein patterns etched into its surface by the elm beetle. Another common barkless one is the ash tree which has more of a random spaghetti pattern. Standing near oak may point to it actually being oak, but all would be great wood even if its pine and solid.
I got my car unloaded from yesterday, and went back to the dump for more. I took the easy stuff I could get to... but there is quite a lot left. I'll go back for more, but the trucks full of pine are already rolling in!
Great that you were able to get more before it got buried or swallowed up with the encroaching Pine Debris Brigade (also known as PDB). Ok I just made that up, its not a real thing, but its effects are real. That sugar maple is some of the best stuff when seasoned and rock hard. The crisp splits tend to have those tapered knife like edges. I like your plywood trunk door gasket protector.
