This scraggly, heavily leaning black cherry needed to go and I have a customer - local BBQ restaurant owner - willing to pay cash. I used a shallow open-faced notch and a bore cut to bring it down safely. Then limbed, skidded and bucked to 8 ft logs. Easy money and beautiful weather to be working out in the woods.
Today's tree was just the smaller logs on left side of the final picture, maybe 10-11" dbh x 60' tall. The logs on the right side are from a sweet cherry I dropped about a week ago. It was up to 19" diameter. Nope.
Moisture not so important, seasoned wood, I would say yes. This from a friend who is always snitching Maple and any Fruit wood from my stacks for his smoker. I have a pellet smoker but I am ridiculed for straying from the pure wood technique. He tells me that unseasoned wood can give a bitter or creosoty flavor as the volatiles boil off in to the smoke. Alternately, he will often soak his seasoned wood in water so it generates more smoke and burns slower. Bear in mind that he is the type who goes into rhapsodies about the qualities of various wood smokes. He is as bad as vinophiles are about wines and tobacco aficionados are about the nuances of taste and smell in cigars and pipe tobacco! I don't do any true smoking (tobacco, weed or meat) so I don't know! I have been known to drink wine and eat smoked meat however. Don't gab away about "hints of leather and berry" or "a slight astringent quality" in the meat! Just pour some more wine and please pass the ribs!
