Yesterday I built the base of my drying pile 13' x 4'. I used chestnut oak 4x4 from last year's milling. Once my work, the weather and the sawyer's schedule mesh I should have about 700 bd-ft of poplar and 1000 bd-ft of oak.
Yes sir, getting the lumber off the ground a few feet really helps dry the wood. I had an air dry kiln quite a few years ago where I did what you did, build a frame to get the wood off the ground by a few feet. I ended up framing it in A=shape style, added some plexiglass and had a really decent air dry kiln. On the backside I had rollers so I could slide my lumber out of the kiln, put it on the rollers, then by opening a window, I could roll it right into my woodworking shop. In that way I could cross cut a 24 foot long board anywhere I needed to without flipping it. It was a good design, but then I got into sheep farming and no longer had time to do any woodworking. :-(
Sounds like a great set up. I've probably harvested 5-6 mbf over the last 10 yrs, combination of trees from my woods and "road hunting" yard trees. I'm getting pretty good at the air drying process. Luck for me, I have several small kiln owners nearby that charge very little for final kiln-drying or if I'm not in a rush, I can bring the air-dried 12% lumber down to my climate controlled shop for a few months to get it down to ~8%. As far as sheep farming, as you know we have been dabbling in breeding Icelandic sheep. Ultimately, we want to establish a small dairy operation, with secondary fiber and meat.
My old woodworking shop did work well, and made it into local newspaper for a variety of reasons. Partly from the way I used levers and pulleys to get planers, jointers and drills out of the way to make the most use of my tiny 12 x 24 woodworking shop, and partly for a marriage proposal using wood. Regarding the latter, I had taken a wooden apple, bored it out so that it had a wooden arrow piercing it, but when you opened the top, an engagement ring was slid over the shaft of the arrow shaft inside the apple. My girlfriend at the time was a teacher, so I called the school and asked if I could give it to her at school...an apple, a teacher...it all fit well, and they said yes. But when I got to school they had gone all out! They had decided to do a hasty all-school assembly, made me hide off stage and gave the apple to one of her kids telling my girlfriend she had to talk about an upcoming speaking contest. As she was talking, the kid gave her the apple, and when she opened it, she was shocked; confused until I came out and asked if "she would marry me". That took her by surprise, a marriage proposal before hundreds of kids!
Ten years ago I had three things going; snowmobiling, sheep farming and woodworking. The problem was snowmobiling and farming just did not work out. I winter lambs so they were being born at the same time the snow is the deepest so it was a never ending internal struggle. If I was home tending to sheep, I felt bad because my snow machine was sitting idle, and even in Maine, snow does not last long. One good rain storm and 2 feet of ridable snow is gone almost overnight. So I felt guilty about not riding my sled, but when I was on my snowmobile, I felt guilty about not doing all the stuff that needed to be done for the sheep. So I ended up selling my snowmobile and getting out of that. That left farming and woodworking, but again my woodworking dynamics had changed. My woodworking was always making wooden models; of trains, tractors, logging, earth moving, and trucks. But having sheep, I needed barns, pens, fences, gates, etc; so it was more of carpentry-type-woodworking then model-making. So I just stopped doing wooden models. And of course that woodworking shop; finished, wired, insulated would make a great lambing pen, so that was soon what it became! Now that I am retired???? I have thought about doing model-making again. I only did custom model making though. A logger, trucker, farmer or gravel contractor wife, girlfriend, son or whatever would want a present and so I would build that person THEIR tractor or truck, right down to the last detail, then put it in a diorama. For example, I had one wife whose husband used a boom mower to clear logging roads that had grown up. Needing the brush cleared in the ditches after 10 years of growth, I made his tractor, complete with boom mower, sitting on a gravel road, mowing around a culvert, with rocks, stumps behind the mower and trees growing in front of the mower. I would put them in glass cases and sell them. I did that for hundreds of people. The problem was those models are cheap to build because they take so little wood, BUT they take a long time to build. I sold them for $250 apiece, but even if I did 1 model per week, that is below minimum wage. Even then, could I get 52 orders per year? I could not do it back then, but now that I am retired; I have thought about returning to where I left off. Not great photos, but this shows a lobster boat I did. You can see its more then just a wooden model, it is putting it in its proper setting.
As for sheep... I would love to get into sheep dairy farming as well. I grew up on a cow dairy farm having 5 in the extended family growing up, so I know dairy farming. But myself, I prefer the size of sheep, their demeanor, and just know sheep. To combine sheep dairy farming just makes sense, and I encourage you in that. I looked into it extensively, and have never ruled it out on my farm, but suffering-snot-balls is it ever expensive to get into! Here in Maine, we only had (2) sheep dairy operations and both are now defunct. One ended from divorce, and the other from retirement, so there was reasons for that, but I think a lot just has to do with overhead costs. My bank...I have a good relationship with them, but they hate new ventures, they are constantly asking me to "prove my numbers through farmers doing it locally", but its hard to do when sheep farming here is so small in scale (the average flock is only 30 sheep). For instance when I wanted to convert to Accelerated Lambing and needed to change my flock genetics to do it, my bank wanted a list of area farmers who did that. Well how could I do that? Most flocks here are for the wool trade, few do meat production, and NONE do cutting edge sheep farming like accelerated lambing. But coming up with $80,000 for a new flock of sheep is not exactly something I can do from my own bank account; not buy the sheep, feed them for a year, and pay all the other costs until the lambs they produce can be sold. That is a lot to pencil out! I do teach classes on sheep farming, and the first thing I tell people is that "Do as much for yourself as you can". For me, I might someday try to build a nice sheep dairy farm barn. I love the concept of sheep dairy farming because a person is getting money from Feb-Sep without having to kill off your animals every year. It also allows for that all-important cash flow. More farms fail from that then any other reason. But for me to get into sheep dairy farming, I would have to do some drastically different things here; things I am not just ready for yet. But I LOVE the idea, and as I said earlier, I really encourage you in doing that.
