Ground finally froze enough. got the call yesterday to bring my truck, trailer, and saw. pretty easy. just had to cut it down, even had another guy to help with the brush. and a machine to load. not high in btu's but its easy and looks cool. next had to drop this guy it was split all the way to the ground. and the old timer likes to have a chain hooked up, just in case. you can see the split, goes all the way to the ground. after cutting the hinge. i wanted the guy to put just a lil tension on it. he didn't listen when i said stop. so he pulled it all the way down. oh well. I cleaned up the stump afterwards. he said he could get $50 for taking this pine down. so I figured its the least i could do. I cut a few branches off, then hooked up the chain. it was near a house and right next to where we were cutting. more pics to come.
this hackberry and mulberry were just a stones throw away. this was a storm blow down. someone had started cutting on it. typical rookies. can tell by the barber chair. it was 3 hackberries growing outta one stump. I cut one and he pulled it out with a chain. I wanted to walk up the tree and cut the limbs off the skinny one. so i could get all 3 pieces but I was worried the tree might stand back up if I took some weight off it. not worth getting hurt for a scrounge. so I took the 2 big sections. my concern was justified when the skinny one stood up after pulling the 2nd section out. it stood up very slowly. prolly took 45 seconds. could have been the frozen ground or the tree tops it was tangled in. here is the finale of the first load. here is the 2nd load. not as full. but its some nice mulberry. burns super hot. next best thing to burning BL
Nice work Felter ? Like that big cedar. You gonna mill it? I had a couple section of cedar like that and hate to make firewood out of it. Never have cut hackberry before and the only time ive ever seen one it was a single tree growing in the front yard of our old house. Cool warty bark. Never cut mulberry either. Cant say ive seen much around here. Nice score btw. Ground frozen here too. I love it.
Never cut any mulberry. Grabbed a quick load of green hackberry the same day I started on the “ more than one load” elm. People around here say it is pretty good firewood, I’m not convinced. It don’t seem to last very long on the ground. Don’t know how long it takes to dry or how it splits when green. I guess I’ll find out, there’s probably close to 2 more there for me to get.
thanks buZZsaw!!!! I'm still not 100% sure what to do with the cedar. I have a friend with a mill, but he says he already has a bunch of cedar. idk what I'd even use it for if i did mill it. . . and ya hackberry is cool, its technically in the elm family but its not considered an elm. it splits a whole lot easier than elm. (I'd say it splits like ash or honey locust) one nice thing about it is that it grows tall and straight and you get a lot of nice straight wood out of one tree. mulberry on the other hand, almost never grows straight. its rated to have the same btu's as Black locust. but definitely doesn't split as easy as BL.
its on the low end of hardwood btu rating. about like silver maple and cherry. it takes a year to season. splitting ain't too bad. I've split it by hand. you get a couple strings here and there but over all its not bad. the very center can be a pain though. kewl pics btw, thanks for posting.
I normally dont hoard softwoods, but spied a bid cedar lof fresh cut roadside near me a couple years ago. Bucked 4' scetions and loaded it in the PU. Still sits in my PA. Not sure of what will become of it. Ordinarily i would pass it up but this was a big un! Never scored mulberry. Ive seldom seen one around here. Years back one grew out of a thicket in my moms back yard. Fast grower and made a mess with the berries.
We have a small one growing on the edge of our woods in the backyard. Other than that and the one from my mothers backyard, i couldnt tell you where another one exists. Funny how these"weed" trees are such great firewood. Have you scored any and if so how much Midwinter ? I guess another bucket list wood for me.
I got a lot of mulberry last spring... Probably two thirds of a cord, from Craigslist and the dump. I had some older stuff, too, but I burned it already this winter during a cold snap.
