I noticed that myself and it seems to be affecting the blue spruces more than the Norways. Could be blight or some type of beetle. The one last May you took down was the one where you rented the bucket truck?
Yes. Cherry Picken' a Dead Spruce! They have another dead one in the side yard. Lady said in the Spring she'd have me back.
Any plans to save and split any of that PREMIUM conifer?!?! Want to borrow my splitter? Snapping a picture of the buZZsaw running hydraulics would be well worth it
Just got home and the house is nice and toasty from burning spruce all day here. When I got up this morning there were a lot of coals in the firebox so I set my wife up with spruce for the day to burn them down. I was not disappointed when I came home!
One more load today. Brought my maul today with grand delusions of halving them on site. Silly pipe dreams There’s still a couple logs left to buck and get out of there. Looks like I’ll be starting the new year off with my work cut out for me.
First thing I thought was "Wow, what's he doing without tires on that hand truck? Is there something I don't know about?" hahahahahaha Awesome score man! I've burned juniper which is a cousin of the cedar...... You can get some real cheap wheels that work great at HarborFreight.....I have a set ready to rock and roll on a Radio Flyer I'm restoring. They have a whole selection there.....
LOL yeah I ended up going with some $30 wheels I found online that were solid rubber, as opposed to the original wheels with tubeless tires. I’m tired of dealing with flat tires. Harbor Freight didn’t even cross my mind, probably should’ve checked with them first. They just opened one in my town this year too. I bought some wheels for my yard trailer there back in May. As much as I dislike giving China the business it’s hard to argue with the price.
Split the two loads of spruce this morning. At least I gave my neighbors until 10 o’clock to nurse their hangovers before starting the splitter. I think stacking all these gnarly pieces will be a challenge so hopefully I can make time this weekend to set up a large bin of sorts to hold it all. Probably just a couple pallets on the ground with pallets on either end and support braces. Half stack/toss the pieces in there.
R 'Round these parts it's a $250 fine and 15 days in jail if you violate noise regulations by using a splitter on a Federal holiday....like NYD. I kid you not. My wonderful neighbor called the cops on me on Memorial Day for using the splitter but the cops were super nice about it.
It was a nice day out yesterday. I decided to get some splitting in. I got the splitter situated and fired it up to warm up, got some rounds ready to roll. Out of the corner of my eye I caught some movement. It was my senior neighbor. I shut the splitter down to say hi. He has had joints replaced and vertebra fused within the last couple years. It’s not uncommon for him to ask me to help lift or move this or that. He said he wanted to help with the splitter. I said thanks but you don’t have to do that. I could see he was getting angry that I wasn’t accepting the help he was offering. Ok but please don’t over do it. He ran the lever for a full tank of gas. It was good to have the help. That’s a neighbor. Someone that calls the cops on you for trying to heat your home is the jerk that lives next door! If it wasn’t FHC I would swap jerk with another term.
I feel now is a good time to set the record straight on this thread. I care about accuracy more than narrative (like some outfits do) so I’m correcting my error. At the very beginning of this thread I scored what I thought was eastern red cedar. I thought it funny at the time that the center didn’t have that red color. Fast forward to today when I took down a row of overgrown arborvitae along my property line. These were growing into my power lines and had to go. I’ll be darned, same stuff. Same bark, smell, and the color of the wood was spot on. So that’s what I scored last summer. Large arborvitae. For what it’s worth, it burned fine. HOT, but fast like paper. I won’t be processing any of this for firewood though. It’s going straight to the dump. Here’s the carnage from today. One small pile on the grass and a huge one on the side of the house:
