"Twas a good day in da woods

Looking good you are definitely getting it done

 

That's a good idea to move the rounds...

 

Well, I got all the rounds hauled to my woods. 11 loads. An Amish kid wants to split it with his dad’s hydro. We are working on a wage scale!



He wants to split it Saturday but we are going to the cabin.
I cut another trailer of junk/punk oak for a buddy in town. He likes it for campfires. A $50 load:





He splits it himself.

 

Another day another cemetery burn pile. It is spose to rain/sleet/ snow whatever later so we lit er off.

 

We had a high of 28F here today and no snow on the ground so I walked my neighbors woods. It’s 40 acres and full of junked cars. Haven’t been in there since early December and oh my there are trees down everywhere. Counted at least a dozen oak and one black cherry. Glove on the cherry to show some girth. She’s a big girl.



Here are just 5 oaks. I couldn’t take pics of all of them.








He lets me cut anything on the ground. But I take care of him at Christmas and spray all his trails with Garlon 4 Ultra cuz his wife hates poison ivy. Garlon 4 absolutely smokes ivy but doesn’t kill grass.

I’m going to be a busy beaver come March.

 

Wow, you make me feel very lazy.

That is awesome work, I am impressed with how dead on you are on all of your rounds

 

Gives new meaning to hitting metal with the saw. Some nice stuff to put the saw to though.

 

I stay on my toes in Robert’s woods. But the thing is, I have 8 oaks and 1 black cherry on the ground in MY woods!
From our July 16th wind event. I should clean up my woods first but we will see.

 

snowed a little here today
I stayed warm and dry in the shed
split about a half cord of oak
there were 6 deer watching me load in the woods

 

A friend about ten miles away just sent me this:



30 black walnuts are on the ground. He is doing the sale himself. He hired a timber feller to drop and skid now he has six timber buyers (mostly from Iowa) to come and inspect. Highest bid takes them! I am going to drive over and do a look I see a few but not many veneer logs there.

 

This old girl might be veneer but I would need to see the length and see how many cat eyes she has.

 

HVBW!!!!!!

 

I’ll let you know how he does. I wager it’s gonna be north of $30K,,,

 

The black walnut market is hot here in Southern Wisconsin. My wife’s brother just sold 42 about fours miles west of me. Here is a small sample. He has another pile across the road but the gate was shut I didn’t drive through.



On my drive by a saw several that were 40 inches DBH. Big girls!

 

Since everybody and their uncle is selling standing black walnut in the neighborhood I took stock of mine growing in my 40.
They are not ready but I already knew this. I bought a diameter tape on ebay. It worked well sorta. It’s hard to wrap it around a tree that has a bunch of unwanted vegetation around it.



The top numbers are the ones to read. You measure the circumference around the tree DBH to get the diameter. It is exactly 3.14 inches between the bold numbers gee I wonder how they figured that out.
Since the gooseberry’s and other crap was giving me fits today, I made a Biltmore stick tonight. I found a template on some forest site. You stand 25 inches from the tree hold the stick against the tree 4 and a half feet from ground level line up the left end of the stick on one side of the tree and without moving your head and hand (just move your eyes) you read the DBH on the right side of the tree.


I am going back tomorrow and see just how close my home made Biltmore is to the diameter tape. If it is close I will use my stick from now on. I only found 4 black walnuts today that were larger than 24 inches DBH. I prolly found 100 or so that were between 18 and 23 inches. And hundreds 15 inches and lower. I need at least a semi load of 24 inchers to have a good walnut timber sale. 3 to 4 years from now? maybe

 

Very nice logs

 

Several locations in Wisconsin set record high temps today. I went to the woods. Why not? No snow and 50F I’ll take it.

I left all the tree measuring devices in the shed and grabbed 3 saws. I worked up 3 oaks that have been on the ground since our July wind event. I never ran my saw into the ground once. Helps when the trees are at good height.



In the last pic I bailed cuz the oak top and the pinched black locust started talking to me. I will let gravity and wind do its thing.
I have 109 rounds on the ground from those 3 oaks. Two were reds and one was a black.

 

And my bro in law called me this morning with a black walnut report. His best BW was 30”DBH with four potential 8 foot saw logs and he had high hope$. Bad news when they dropped it they found out it was hollow. And FULL of sleeping honey bees. He was heartbroken but his son will burn it his outdoor boiler so they’ll get some use out of it.

 

Can you find a beekeeper to save the bees? We had that happen a few years ago and I still regret not trying to save them.