More woodcutting

My friend Al came over today to help me cut the one tree that I'd started to fell, but stopped because I didn't think I was up to taking it down alone. This tree was a very hard hardwood -- I thought it might be maple based on the tips of the branches, but Al thought it wasn't based on the bark and he probably knows better than me -- but whatever it was, it's remarkably dense and hard. It was about the limit of what my saw can handle.

The felling was by the book: felling notch, then felling cut, then timber and it fell, with me running to the safe spot to watch. But of course it fell onto another tree and hung there. It took a while to bring it down from there -- time involving looping a rope around it using a roof rake, tying it to Al's SUV, and then him pulling it, tires slipping on the front lawn snow, until it finally came down.

I spent a solid hour limbing it before the cold and tiredness had soaked in enough that I had to stop. There's at least another hour of limbing and bucking just to get to where I can haul the pieces up to be sliced to size. Probably two hours of bucking and splitting, then stacking from there. But Al thinks it'll be at least half a cord, maybe a whole cord, of remarkably good quality hardwood.

Don't know if I'll finish it this year or if it'll sit out there until spring before I finish it. Depends on how the weather goes on the weekends, I suppose. But it's going to be great wood, burning a good long time.

We also stacked the third-of-a-cord previously cut (Al did most of the work in that), but didn't get started on stacking the cord of greenwood we just had delivered (at $230!). If I keep up this "hobby," though, maybe I won't need to buy more wood in future years.