Anybody CSS and leave it in the woods or similar place that's not a designated wood storage lot?? I'm chasing the elusive 3 year plan now. I mainly use a 4 wheeler and a pull behind cart to harvest dead standing timber and I've already got about half of next year's wood CSS. I expect to run out of room soon in the wood storage lot and have about 2 dozen live maples marked to process that are in the woods. I figure at worst all I have to do is haul it out of the woods in a couple of years. It may not dry in an ideal location but it helps me stay ahead. Any thoughts or suggestions?
Stacked in the woods isn't ideal but it will start drying. As you said, bring it out as you have room.
I had 5 cord of ash, hickory, red and white oak on pallets I brought in by hand and later be my BX. Not exactly 'the woods' but remote because of the rough terrain. It ll stayed there for 3 to 5 years simply because operating the BX in the steep hillsides scared the hell out of me. Two things happened this year; we had an extreamly dry fall and I bought a 4wd Tacoma. The Tacoma handles the hillsides safely and can haul way more wood than the BX with the small trailer. If you have good air flow and your stacks are off the ground you should be fine, especially if you have older wood in your main storage area. You can rotate the 3 year old stuff out and replace it with wood split, stacked elsewhere on your property
I had 5 cord of ash, hickory, red and white oak on pallets I brought in by hand and later be my BX. Not exactly 'the woods' but remote because of the rough terrain. It all stayed there for 3 to 5 years simply because operating the BX in the steep hillsides scared the hell out of me. Two things happened this year; we had an extreamly dry fall and I bought a 4wd Tacoma. The Tacoma handles the hillsides safely and can haul way more wood than the BX with the small trailer, so it all came down the mountain this fall. If you have good air flow and your stacks are off the ground you should be fine, especially if you have older wood in your main storage area. You can rotate the 3 year old stuff out and replace it with wood split, stacked elsewhere on your property for a year or 2. Air flow through your stacks is more gooder than sunshine. In a perfect world you get both, but who really lives in Perfectville!
As long as there are no wood pirates around, that's a good plan. My FIL stacks a lot of wood like that.
I stack a small amount in the woods. I just top cover it and try to get it where the sun hits it. Dries great, I will move it in to a "permanent" location in the spring. Sun, wind, and a tarp.....works
My uncle , cousin and I stored about 10 cords on pallets in my uncle's woodlot with tarps for a top cover for about a year and it turned out just fine. We just came and got truckloads as we needed it.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with stacking in the woods so long as you don't have to be concerned with thieves. We stack it either in the woods or just barely out in the open as these pictures show. It actually can work out quite nicely and some worry that stacking in the woods does not allow enough sunshine to dry the wood. That is sad they think this way because air flow is still more important than sunshine for drying purposes. Even inside the woods like you get some good airflow throughout the year. I do still recommend top covering the wood and stacking it off the ground. One nice part of stacking in the woods is that you can just go cut a couple of saplings and stack the wood on those rather than pallets or anything else. The only cost is what little gas you will use in the saw which is a couple pennies worth at most.
One thing that can go wrong did though . The year after we used all that wood we were storing some (maybe a cord) in another area of the woods and the top of a dead hemlock snapped off during a storm and it crashed into that wood pile. What a mess! Splits were everywhere and the piece of roofing steel that was on top was all smashed. damm you Murphy!
What I like to do is to stack the rounds off the ground and then move to the next tree to be cut. That way the drying process starts and I can split later which could be months away. Kinda breaks the job from huge to when I want to. Of course this only works if you are well ahead and can wait. bob
If I have a few trees in one area I'm working on, I'll process them as I go and throw all the splits in one pile. Once I'm done, I'll do the stacking. If it's on a hill/mountain, once I'm done splitting, I'll toss or throw the splits down to level ground. Here's one of my piles after working on a few trees that were on a somewhat steep hill from a few years back. When the wood is split, it will also keep it from rolling down the hill!
What a sweet looking pile of nice straight grained red oak. Looks like it wasn't hollow in the middle too. THat sure would look nice :stacke: in my yard.
There is also some black locust and some black birch in that pile. Some of the black birch had to be noodled. Some gnarly stuff! The date on that picture was 10/02/2013. I might be burning some of it next season 17/18, but definitely the following season 18/19.
I've been thinking! Do y'all smell the smoke? But I'll tell you what. I'll trade you all of my hardwood firewood (ash, cherry, elm, walnut, hickory, black birch, black locust, white oak, and chestnut oak) for your nasty eastern white pine. But, here's the sticker. For every two cords of white pine you bring me, can be in log form, in return, you can have one cord of my hardwood. Well, one little exception, I get to keep all the poplar. (a soft hardwood) Heck, the white pine doesn't even have to be seasoned, though all of my hardwoods are. Some as much as 4 years and as little as a year and a half! Remember, you will have to deliver the white pine to me, after which you can pick up the hardwood. I'll even help you load! You see, pine and poplar are my most favored woods! Now if you were really close, I might have to up the trade to 3 cord of pine to one cord of seasoned hardwood. So, is it a deal?
