Hoarding history

The first memories of firewood hoarding are going to the telephone pole treatment plant with my Dad to get firewood from the trimmed ends of the poles.
Shortly after I got married, I was able to make a homesite on some property our family owned. My father-in-law gave me an old Homelite XL-12 that was found in the woods at the timber camp where he worked.
The first time I tried to use it to clear the property, i knew nothing about running a chainsaw, and it was so dull, I seriously thought it would be easier with an axe. I took the chain to a local fellow who ran big hot saws to be sharpened and I’ve been hooked on chainsaws since.
Got a well used Shindaiwa 500 chainsaw after being impressed with a Shindaiwa brush cutter I purchased, and I’ve been collecting and running Shindaiwa equipment for the most part.
I actually enjoy the whole hoarding process.
I’m interested in hearing from other members about their hoarding history.



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As a young buck, I helped my uncle clear a big lot for his future home site. We cut and split all the wood, and sold as firewood. Tops and branches made fire pit wood at night. Had a blast, learned how to run and maintain a chainsaw, and learned more work ethic that helped later in life.

Fast forward to our first home purchase, on a quarter acre in town.. had to cut some hazard trees, did the same with them as I did as a kid; css and sell. No stove nor hope of one in the three family house, but set wood heat as a goal for our next place

Fast forward further to five years ago moving into our current home with an owb. Heating with wood was a great idea and one that helped sell us the house. Got a log load (triaxle) and anything I could scrounge to get us through the first year. Wound up needing another triaxle load by February. We hand split on Sunday to get us through the week. It was fun and awful at the same time - snow, rain, -20*, doesn't matter - gotta have cut split wood to run through the owb. My wife and (then 12yr old) daughter bought in though, and it was good family time. Mama queued up the rounds after I cut, kiddo humped them over to the owb to stack.

We decided early that winter that to get ahead and running hydraulics was on the agenda asap. Got a used splitter at a good price, answered every Craigslist ad we could find, and never bought wood again. 15 cord/yr is a lot more fun when it's free, even though I've gradually lost more help as my wife hurt her back, then gave birth, and my first daughter found all of her time occupied by swim, track, NHS, and work.

After finding that the owb was leaking somewhere under ground, we switched to indoor wood heat this year with a Woodstock Ideal Steel. I immediately got onto the three year plan by virtue of reduced demand compared to what I had been prepared for, and we are loving the heat and ambiance of an indoor stove.

 

One of my earliest memories in life is of fire and ice. 8" of snow outside of my Aunt's ranch home near Austin Texas. Inside, a hearth, fire place and wall made of local stone that took up the entire end of the house. There was a blazing fire probably of Cedar brush and Pecan wood in the fire place. I was in a little bed a short distance from the fire. In later visits I remember high backed, cushioned chairs with foot stools facing the fireplace. The high backs with deep wings would keep the cold drafts off your back. In those poorly insulated days, your front would roast and your backside would freeze. My Aunt would place coals from the fire in a long handled warming pan with a lid and run it around under the covers of the bed just before we hopped in. The kitchen was the warmest room in the house usually. Like many farm or ranch houses it was huge. At one end was a mammoth propane/coal/wood range and at the other end was a large pot belly stove. During deep cold most social life took place in the kitchen. Every home associated with my Dad's family, from two ranches to a couple of homes in Austin to My Grandfather's offices had some form of wood heat. Later in life, almost every home my family lived in had at least a fireplace. We would gather small amounts of wood as a family and it was great fun. Once we and a bunch of neighbors were isolated for almost 2 weeks after a huge snow storm. Every one moved in to our house because we had the only source of heat. All this has left lasting impressions on me and I will never own a house without the capability of wood heat. Some 38 years ago, when my new Wif and I bought a heavily wooded lot to build a home, I bought a Stihl 028 saw and took out around a dozen trees which heated our modest new home off and on for several years. By the time we finally traded out the original Schrader wood stove for an EPA rated stove we were hopelessly captured by wood heat. I love everything about wood heat except maybe the stacking. I now have 2 stihl chainsaws, a 5'X8.5" utility trailer and a hydraulic wood splitter. My wood shed holds approx. 7 cords. We usually heat with wood for close to 5 months a year, burning about half the shed a year.

 

The house I have was my grandparents, they heated with a coal stove in the cellar which also was the coal bin. I went to an agricultural high school and majored in forestry. We used to go in the woods and have to cut trees down that the teacher assigned to each of us and buck them into maximum log length for the lumber mill. Our grades depended on it being done right. When I got my 1st apt back during the oil crisis of the 70's which was in a 1770's farm house. My landlord (downstairs) was getting killed with that drafty old house and the high price of fuel oil then. So I bought him a stove and installed it for him and cut and supplied the wood in lieu of rent. When I got my grandparents house in "82" I installed a cheap stove and had no wood, so I brought pallets home from work all winter and cut them up as needed, when needed for heat. The next year, "83" I bought my Vermont Castings Resolute for the huge amount of $650.00, that was THE top of the line stove back then. It's still heating me as I type. That year my first stacks were about 200' from the house. Wouldn't you know we got 3 or 4 feet of snow that year. It was 15 minute trip post holing thru the deep snow for an arm load of wood. The next year the stacks were 20 feet from the kitchen and have been there since.

 

Dad had a camp. Cutting and splitting wood by hand was fun! Camp used to be farm and most trees were 8 inch diameter and easy.
I didn't start hoarding wood til almost college. Great uncle had a maple sugar operation. Needed 8 cord a year. It was his pride and joy. In his 80s it was too much for him. Seemed only right to enable his syrup addiction

 

I grew up what could easily pass as a "city boy" in Connecticut. Not poor, but poor adjacent at the start, and increasingly more comfortable as time went on, but the necessity of frugality never left me. I hope that makes sense.
In my mid teen years I would take summer trips for about a month at a time up to visit family on an old dairy farm in PEI Canada. While there my cousins and I would work on the farm with my great uncles helping with the milking operation but mostly to do the hay, square bailing. In the kitchen was, and still is to this day, an old Elmira wood cook stove. I could only guess how old it was, but I believe it was there for generations. It had a hot water tank hooked up to it and that was the only source of hot water- but being on the wood cookstove- the fire was going every day.
My great uncles had a log splitter hooked up to the back of the tractor on a shaft drive apparatus (I'm not sure of what its called). They would use the hydraulic splitter for almost everything, but they had what I'm pretty sure was an axe, and not a splitting maul. My great uncle Richard told me not to bother with the axe because the splitter did all the work they needed. Being 14 ore 15 I didn't listen and within a few minutes I overstruck the log I was working on and cracked the head off the old axe. I was mortified, but fessed up and to my Uncles credit told it was no big deal and replaced the handle with another on from the barn. I kept at it and don't recall busting it apart, so I think I didn't.
The next couple years I would go up for the summer and my favorite was the wood splitting.
Our house in CT didn't have a stove, or fireplace or even firepit- but a house I lived in when I was in my mid 20's had an insert in the fireplace. I was in all my glory. I had a Toyota Yaris hatchback, and I would lay the back seat down and fill the back up with wood, get it back to my house, cut it, split it and stack it in the back yard. Big time learning curve, but I learned a bit by reading, but most my doing it wrong. The stacks fell over, I didn't cover it and wet leaves got in everywhere. Wasn't long before I found out what a wedge was and that became my new best friend.
Flash forward to 31. Bought my house, put in an old Vermont Castings Vigilant I got second hand on CL, built a hearth and put the chimney up and without too many problems really found my stride. Little mistakes here and there, bit of a learning curve on the stove, but it gave me a pretty good run for 3 years. Now I'm newly married and we remodeled the house. The old stove was too powerful so I gave it to my brother in law and bought the newest model by Woodstock Stoves. I got the Survival model with the Navajo artwork. Currently I have approximately a half cord on the front porch in the sun. I've got a full cord in the back CSS and I have (not good at estimating yet) maybe .75 cord in rounds left to split. Most controversially I have compressed wood bricks that I've used along with the wood, and while I may have lost all of you at this point, I like them.

 

Lucky you, summers on PEI as a teen! Few get to experience that kind of life anymore. Wood bricks are fine, they have gotten me through some cold Marches. The only issue I have with them, is that they aren't free. Welcome to FHC, and keep posting, you are a good storyteller.

 

Grew up with a masonry fjreplace we would get wood and cut and split it every year also would help my aunts and un les gather furewood for there homes each year.
Fast forward 20 years. Got my own wood stove and have been hoarding ever since.

 

Welcome to the FHC RGrant nice to have you here. what part of CT you call home? There,s a few of us fellow nutmegers on here. I'm in North Haven

 

Similar story with Stoveburner38 and the masonry fireplaces. Plus the old wood stoves my aunt had were common heaters. When my parents garage was put up one spring, I was about 15 at the time and trees were cut down for the garage space. The rounds were cut and I was still taking drivers ed while about 5-6 cords of wood needed splitting by hand. Looking back at pictures I was a string bean!!! When I finally got the license, I had taken loads of wood to my aunts for her wood stack in the stall in the barn. She told me since the house she owned at the time was so old and drafty, 3-4 cords was common. Often that wood was sub par but it worked. Now she owns better insulated house she doesn’t burn much besides a power outage.

Growing up, making fires was often in camping and the like but the concept of DRY WOOD was really learned here. Most wood here you can fell it in the previous spring to fall and then by that coming summer, it’s ready enough. However, that was a teachable moment and now I stack up everything I can above ground and I really come to appreciate what the differences having learned about drying wood.

 

Welcome RGrant .. Great story and nothing wrong with using compressed sawdust bricks. It's a fuel source and you know its dry!!

 

When I was 6 or 7 my dad installed a Riteway wood & coal stove in the basement of our house. This was in '76 or '77. He ran the chimney (metalbestos) up through the floor, the closet in my bedroom, the attic and out the roof. We already had two woodburning fireplaces, so having and cutting wood was nothing new; I guess I was born into it. For the next ten years I cut, split and stacked 5-6 cords of wood a year with him. We never had a splitter so I started with a regular splitting maul. He went and bought one of the Sotz Monster Mauls from an ad in Country Journal magazine. I still have all those old CJ magazines, it's fun to go back though them and see what was new then, is gospel now. Still have the Sotz Monster Maul too, although now it's fun to let my kids try to use it. Dad won't touch it anymore.

I went away to college and then returned home, where I stayed for a few more years, working and contributing time and labor to the home heating effort. Always with the old Homelite Super XL (the blue farm saw), his 4x6 dump trailer and his 1974 Jeep CJ-5. He doesn't have the same Jeep anymore but he still has the trailer, and the Homie has been upgraded a couple times and now he uses a Dolmar PS-421 like me. I have a lot more "tools" than the old man but he still finds a way to get it done. I think retirement plays a part in that.

So I got married in 2001, built a house up the road, bought my own equipment, split the cost of a new hydraulic splitter with Dad, and we both use it every year. I cut my own 8-12 cords a year and sometimes my parents will come up to my house and help me for a day or two cutting my firewood. I think they're bored sometimes. My dad is 80 and mom is 76 and they both still get out in the woods and cut, split and stack their own 5-6 cords a year, although this year may be the last as they are considering becoming snowbirds and spending time in Florida.

I spent years working with site contractors who were always eager to get rid of wood from land clearing operations, so I've always had a source of wood even if it was somewhat junk.

 

I never burned before I bought my house three years ago. Propane prices taught me in a hurry to utilize the stoves in the house

 

I remember hauling wood in the old Studebaker pickup. Dad's first saw was a David Bradley monster. After the Studebaker dad bought an old military surplus 1 ton Dodge panel van with windows. I can sthil smell green locust we used to haul. Got married in the seventies and rented a house that had an old boxwood stove. I bought a Montgomery Wards chainsaw with a 10 inch bar an started cutting dead oak trees and drug them out with my Forrest Gump snapper mower. I Stihl have that saw. I guess the rest is noodles and sawdust.

 

Welcome fellow nutmegger. Good read. And hey many of us including I have burnt bricks.

 

I started hoarding when I was 13...some 25 years ago. My neighbor cut about 30 trees down, and said I could take some wood. He said some, not knowing how much a 13 year old could haul with no equipment. It was all cut 16 to 18 inch. I wheelbarrowed about 2 cords out of there, and split all by hand. My family never burned wood. but my other neighbor always took me camping, I donated the firewood for the next 3 years. After that my friends and I made it a tradition to always go camping. Guess who supplied the firewood? Then it was scrounging wood for just the backyard firepit at our old place. 3 years ago I bought a house and installed a woodstove. I am now up to 15 cords CSS, hopefully on the 3 year plan. Also have about 5 cords needing to be cut and split yet. Yes, the wife knows I have a problem, but it keeps her buns warm all winter, and besides for gas and equipment maintenance, it's free as of this year. Proud to say I have only spent about 700 bucks on around 9 cords of wood I already burned. The rest has been free finds, all 20 cords I have in stock right now.