Did you enjoy putting up firewood as a kid?

I loved it when i was a kid. The sound of a chain saw or wood chipper was music to my ears. Sunday was firewood day and i couldnt wait. Dad would fell a tree in the wood lot and cut it up. I would use a little bucksaw to help limb. Uncle (who lived next door) had his lawn tractor to haul it out and the wood would be divided up. Dad would split it and him and i would stack. As i got older i would split too. Later on i was mostly me who got the wood. Sometimes my older brother would split, but he didnt like it like i did.
I think i was 14-15 when i first used a chainsaw. My folks had divorced and i would cut wood for mom.
She would get triaxle loads of logs. I would cut & split. She would stack.
Many, many fond memories.

 

Nope, hated it.

 

So many awesome stories!
I was 4ish when my dad and I went to the woods. Mid 70's. He built a custom log trailer for his wheelhorse, and cut dead standing. Alone. I joined him when it was all bucked, and needed loading. I remember loading the smaller logs while he stacked the bigger ones. I'd ride the loaded trailer back home. Sometimes when the ground was squishy the trailer would tip. 2x I was up and riding, but was always thrown clear and ended up standing.
I was not old enough to run a saw, nor feed the smoke dragon (Nashua). But I remember the smell of fresh air, work, wood smoke, and the heat of the fire. We stopped burning wood after a few years.....that was a lot of work for one man and a little boy! Everything was split by hand in those days.

Now with our own son, we have made many similar memories, going out for wood scores, cutting, hauling, unloading, splitting, stacking, bringing in and burning. He is old enough to enjoy the heat and fruits of his labor. And he likes the sometimes intentional whif of woodsmoke.
Did I enjoy it? Not sure at the time. But those times are the reason I do enjoy it now.
Many fond memories of driving through the woods with my dad.
Sca

 

We didn't heat with wood, but my uncle that lived 2 doors down did...and I was always at their place to hang out with my slightly older cousin, and we would often thaw out next to the stove in the basement after playing in the snow...I did occasionally help them make wood though...about the only exposure I had to it until I took it up as an adult (about 12 years ago)
Ironically my uncle gave up the wood heat (age) and now almost my whole immediate family heats primarily with wood (youngest sister is the oddball )

 

I loved working with wood growing up. To be honest, it was probably because I didn't have to deal with it day in day out. My family only burned wood in a fireplace but dad's best friend had 30ac and heated only with wood. We helped him cut wood and that's where I caught the bug. My wife and I moved to Pollock Pines in 2000 and the house had a wood stove. I had to buy my first wood and it wasn't fully seasoned. I learned to find standing dead trees and we made do with wood that really wasn't ready to burn by my standards today. We had our first snow in September that year and our last snow fall in July. We went through 7 cords of wood that year and eventually learned the stove had leak! That first year burning wood hooked me completely. I love getting out in the woods, the chainsaws, the mauls, the splitter the manual labor and working with my sons.

 

My stepdad did landscaping in the spring / summer / fall and logging and plowing in the winter. I hated, hated, hated every last bit of it. Up before the sun year round. We were always loading a truck of wood and stacking it for someone else, and I had long moved out of the house by the time we had our own wood burning stove and OWB, so I couldn't enjoy any fruits of my labor. Had to haul two Jonsered 670 Superchiefs with 24" bars, mauls, jerry cans, etc. from the truck to the lot, and when you're 10 years old that's a LOT to carry. And of course he never let me run them, which was probably the right choice at the time. But guess who owns those two Superchiefs now?
At the time the smell of split red oak disgusted me. I associated it with endless work, roughed-up hands and bruised shins. Once I started harvesting my own fire wood that completely changed and I can't get enough of it. I get cranky when I don't get my axe and saw time in. When you grow and get to see the reward in all that hard work it changes your perception a bit. I even sold a couple loads of wood myself the other day and thought "Oh, how you've changed!"

 

Did not have to do much as a kid as our house was in the burbs and oil heat. But long camping trips in the summer with my older brother and mom, I was always in charge of wood gathering and campfire since age 8. After college, lived in an old farmhouse with only source of heat a wood cookstove. Loved it, and ever since have rented or owned homes where I pretty much exclusively heat with firewood...and still love it. 45+ years.

 

We never heated with wood when I grew up. Not until I bought the place did a stove go in. I knew full well there would be no buying oil. The neighbors burnt when I was young and I can remember many a day of helping them as a kid. Old Allis Chalmers pulled the wagon across the street.

 

My father was always in a better mood when we processed wood. My grandfather would come over to help and my mother would make us beef stew with homemade rolls. It was a good time for all of us.

 

One time I was pushing a wheelbarrow full of splits into the basement and I slipped on the ice and cracked my front tooth in half on the side of the wheelbarrow. I was probably 10-11. They glued it back on and eventually I had to get a crown.

 

I liked it-and I don't say that lightly. My father was a self-employed excavator who also logged in the wintertime until the early 1970s. I spent many hours helping with the construction business, and I never liked it as a kid. My dad wasn't a good teacher and criticized me a lot.
In 1974 my parents put in a wood stove. My brother and I started to go to the woods with dad-we 8-10 years old. Now, it was different from most people going to cut wood-he used his Case crawler loader with a winch to skid tops out from logging jobs his logger friends finished. Our job was to fill the bucket with wood he would cut in the woods (never came out empty-I'm guessing that 1.5 cu yd bucket held a face cord of wood) and filling the bucket on the landing as he cut up the skidded tops-to be loaded on the dump truck. It was the first job I think I ever did right!
As the years went along, our roles developed into doing most of the splitting and stacking, and my dad started to sell wood-it was some winter income when he couldn't do dirt work. Started to run saws-first a John Deere 50, then his Pro Mac 850-that saw spoiled me for life!
I guess those memories are why I still cut wood with my brother-he took over the business, had a boiler, and sells some on the side. I am probably the only man who hasn't burned wood in 22 years yet owns a MS 461 and was drooling over a MS 400 at the saw shop yesterday,

 

I have fond memories of putting up wood with my dad. He started burning wood in the 70s and it stuck thru the early 90s before he lost his help lol. Then I started cutting wood in 2007 and we both started burning again. He is my helper now.

 

I didnt get involved with firewood till I met my wife at 19. She was young (15) firewood was a way for her dad and I to get to know each other. Been together 20 years and married 10. I do all the firewood now since the FIL can't run a saw due to severe tendinitis. Only way I wouldn't enjoy it is if I was cutting to sell.

 

So far no one has had an even close to similar experience to my wood cutting as a kid.

Growing up, my Parents owned a Boathouse (floating home) and almost all of our wood was acquired by “Boat Logging “. Just upstream from the moorage was a series of pile wingdams, basically think a good neighbor fence made of staggered pilings, with a horizontal log bolted in place about 4’ from the tops, to keep everything rigid.

Just upstream from the wingdams, was a log rafting operation, nice logs would often get loose and end up against the wingdams, the log rafting operation never seemed too concerned about rounding up the strays, so every so often my Father and I, and several other neighbors from the moorage would scout the wingdams for firewood logs, which were towed off the wingdams and back to the moorage, which had it’s own boat ramp, we had a 1969 Ford wagon with a 390 and a tow pkg, we would skid the logs up the ramp, and buck them up, in the parking lot. If we rounded up any Really BIG logs, a friend down there had a late 60’s, early 70’s Chevy Wrecker that he would bring down, pick up the but end with Dickie’s old wrecker, and we never found a log that ol Chevy couldn’t drag out.

We didn’t use the fireplace at home for serious heating, though we usually had at least a cord at the house. The boathouse had a Franklin Fireplace in it, and that got a lot more use than the baseboard heaters in it did



This is a stolen pic of a boat very similar to the one that we used boat logging, it was moored alongside the boathouse during the warmer months



This is what stayed in the “Boatwell” during the warmer months, then home to the garage for the winter. “Plum Crazy “ had more than enough power to pull logs off the wingdams, but not the Agility . Ol’ Blue would move to the boatwell so we always had a boat on hand whenever good wood was spotted

Dad had a pre chain brake Mac SP 60, that I learned to cut with, I probably started using it around 11 years old, for some reason though, at that point Dad did all the cutting over the side of the boat , but by 15 nobody thought anything about it if I grabbed the saw and Ol Blue and went with some friends to cut wood for our bonfires while camping on McGuire Island, just across from the boathouse. I have some Great memories of the 70’s and 80’s on the Columbia River, Boats, Chainsaws, Time with my Dad and Friends, I had an Awesome childhood, and Appreciate it



Doug

 

We didn't have a wood stove or fireplace, growing up. So, no need to stack wood.

 

I think I liked it. It meant getting out in the woods and sometimes my dad brought a .22 to shoot when we were done with wood. I didn't have any interest in the saw but there was plenty of work moving and loading wood. I also think I would go out and split wood at home without being asked, so i didn't mind doing that.
It's more fun now that my dad and I are filling both our trucks for both our houses.

 

We didn't burn wood when I was a kid. When I got out of highschool, my gramma started using her fireplace again, which had not been used in decades except as a butane heater. Once converted back to wood, the fireplace there was a place to hang out during midday breaks on my hunting trips in the winter. The house was on the homeplace on the family farm and it was in the 'river bottoms,' meaning river delta. Which means flat as a board farmland. Not many trees and the wind would blow strong. Very fond memories of sitting or standing by that fireplace with the cold wind whistling through the cracks of the old house and yakking with family. So, my limited amount of dealing with firewood from then was positive. But I was not involved in acquiring the wood, I guess my older cousin did that. My only real experience involving firewood as a child was scrounging pieces of wood for boy scout campfires, lol. Now, that, I loved!

 

My jobs were stacking, bringing wood into the house and cleaning out ashes. So I disliked (hate is too strong)

But I’ve always loved building and tending fires. Either at the stove or in the woods, usually with my brother.

I got my first chainsaw at 39 or 40. First time ever running one. Now I love putting up firewood.