My screen name is FarmerJ. Got it from my mom many moons ago. I was working for a farmer at the time and also in the army guard. She had both my personal and army emails and had me listed as Farmerj and armydude to keep my emails straight and what I was doing. It stuck. avatar is our chocolate lab, Pebbles. She’s my shadow. I don’t really go anywhere without her. getting ready to “semi” retire when my national guard retirement kicks in, around October 2025. Been an owner operator now since 2012 and had my own authority from 2013 until 2019. In September this year, we struck a deal and bought a 5.5 acre Woodlot for building our retirement home on. 5 miles from the nearest railroad/town. 1/2 mile off the closest major county road. We’ve already started to clean the place up and there’s lots of work going forward. Plan is to make and sell split and seasoned firewood to supplement the retirement pay for probably 10-15 years. hope to build up to 100-200 cord a year. Guy has to have goals.
Thanks, I got home a week ago and parked the truck. I’m off now until end of January. I’m making do in the cold. We’re now into day 7 of staying below the donut. I’m making do…
Welcome FarmerJ. Sounds like a good bit of wood to process. Any plans for a dedicated processor to feed logs into? Will this be a solo operation?
I’m looking at renting a different model a few times just to get different feels. because of where I live in Minnesota, Brute Force out of Wisconsin is high on the list as well as an Easton. Wallenstein hit my radar this week too when I went looking at grapple trailers. yea, I’m open for suggestions too. sourcing that much wood has got me considering hauling it in by scrounging like Facebook or Craigslist, putting tab fliers up local etc and using a trailer. since I’d like a dump trailer anyway for making delivery of cord up to 4 face cord, it’s an option albeit a very expensive one. then there’s the entire desire of not wanting to deal with a CDL physical ever again after I sell the semi. looking to just be a solo gig. A processor should let me process about a semi load a month easily. That should let me make 130-170 cord split annually. At $65k plus for a decent processor, I’m looking at just building it as things progress. that’ll be enough for me I think.
pebbles is now 4 years old. She’s been on the truck with me now for 3 of those years. for a 60# lab, she really plays nice with our Pekingese/shiztzu mix puppies we got this past year.
The red area was all taken out by the county when they condemned the property and then took it under tax forfeiture. That was like 15 years ago. The clean up of all the junk cars, structure etc were all done like 3 years ago. the yellow area needs to still have all the farm debris cleaned up out of it. the green area is where I want to take the line of trees out to kind of open up the property more. Looking from east to west of the red area. The green area is the trees on the left of this picture. The Quonset is pretty much junk. Over half of the rafters need to be replace due to rot. this area is to become my woodyard
Welcome to the FHC! Great to have you Some ambitious goals there. Looking forward to seeing pics of your progress.
Welcome to the forum FarmerJ. Looks and sounds like a good time to park that truck and machine for a while. Also sounds like you have some work ahead of you but it should be a happy time. We wish you well.
