Disgusting.Just plain disgusting

[avalancher]

I have done quite a few tree jobs this summer,althought its not my primary source of income.Unlike years in the past 90 percent of my customers want the wood left on site,I have dragged very little back to the house for my own use.In fact,for my own use this winter,all I have left is about 8 cords and that has to fuel not only the house but my shop as well.Guess I shoudnt complain,its their wood I guess.

Last night on the way home I went past a house where I had taken down a large white oak for an elderly couple in their back yard,tree was 26 inches DBH.Much to my horror, that wood is still laying on the ground,with most of the rounds laying face down in wet dirt.I stopped and talked to the couple to see if maybe they had changed their mind about using the wood themselves,and they were pretty insistant that they needed the wood to heat their home this winter to make up for what I charged them to take the tree down.
I made a point to drive past three more houses on the way home,and each and every one of them had the same story going on.Wood was laying right where I dropped it.
Now I know folks are having a hard time financially these past few years,but why waste such good firewood?No matter what I tell them about getting that wood up off of the ground,split and stacked,nobody seems to be paying any attention at all to what I tell them.And most of these folks burn wood regular so you would think they would have some idea that wood takes awhile to dry out.
It plain disgusts me to see good wood go to waste like that,especially when with a little effort it could be put to good use.
Anyone else seeing this going on around your neck of the woods?

 

[gwiley]

Funny thing, my wife and I were talking a bout this just this morning. It is so sad to see an 80 year old oak sit and rot on the ground when it could have been put to use!

 

[fields_mj]

I have to admit that I've done a bit of it myself. I cut mostly downed trees anyway, but in Jan I dropped several black locusts for a guy. Lost my front differential in the truck in the process. Then the snow got deep. By the time I got the truck fixed, he had taken the tractor and drug the trees over out of the field so that I could buck them up any time I wanted. Made it out mid spring and did most of the bucking in one evening after work. Since then, it seems like every time the ground is dry, I'm too busy to go split a load and haul it in. I'm trying to get it hauled in and stacked by the end of this month so that I can get it sprayed for bugs. They are mostly around 18", but even though I don't have them split yet, they are already pretty dry.

Monday is supposed to be very nasty heat wise, but I think I'm going to load up on water and gatoraid and go get as much of it split as I can before another rain comes in.

 

[smokinj]

Yep, if anyone around here has not got enough wood there is at least 10 cords lying on the ground bucked in a mile radius.

 

[outdoorlivin247]

All the time...

A friend of mine owns a real estate and insurance company and had a house listed that had a large 36"+ red oak dead on the property...He talked to the owner about having it removed and they said they wanted to make furniture out of it...

He went by after the closing to see two guys trying to cut it down w/ a little 14" bar on a throw away saw...Need less to say after having to cut a notch out of the back to get the back cut thru, the tree still lays there to this day...That was probably 4 years ago...:bang:

 

[Mike PA]

I see it a lot. Most people eventually get to it, just not quickly enough to be completely dry by winter. A lot of people think that as long as it is cut, it will be sufficiently dry come winter. They also usually don;t realize just how wet their wood is and how much better it could be.

I have to admit that I am somewhat guilty of this at the moment. I've got a fairly large pile of wood, some in logs, some rounds, some split. All of it waiting to get stacked. I've been busy, its too hot, yada yada yada, bunch of excuses. But, having said all that, I also have sufficient wood cut and stacked (or at least piled) and seasoned for next winter, but I've got a lot just sitting around staying wet. I'll get to it - I swear!

 

[TJ-Bill]

There's a house at the end of my road that drives me nutz everytime I drive by. The guy has to have 4-5 cords cut up and stacked all around his yard and they're all rotten. They're all in these neat little piles in between trees stacked about chest high. I've lived here for 3 years and I've never seen 1 stick move from these piles. To make matters worse I've wathced him add a few more stacks of good size birch. I've seen smoke coming from his chinney and what looks like a wood pile out back. Best part is the house is for sale and some sucker is going to buy it thinking they have a years worth of wood laying around.

 

[avalancher]

There's a house at the end of my road that drives me nutz everytime I drive by. The guy has to have 4-5 cords cut up and stacked all around his yard and they're all rotten. They're all in these neat little piles in between trees stacked about chest high. I've lived here for 3 years and I've never seen 1 stick move from these piles. To make matters worse I've wathced him add a few more stacks of good size birch. I've seen smoke coming from his chinney and what looks like a wood pile out back. Best part is the house is for sale and some sucker is going to buy it thinking they have a years worth of wood laying around.

Funny that you should mention that.A guy up the road from me bought a house and was tickled pink that the guy selling the place didnt want to move the three cords of wood when he moved.He tried burning it last winter,and couldnt get a decent fire out of it.I met him down at the lake,we got to talking,and I told him that I would swing by and look at the wood.

"Man,that aint never going to burn.Its rotted through and through.No wonder he didnt want to move it with him!"
That guy was some bummed out.He had hoped something was wrong with the fireplace......

 

[Laird]

I drive by a house every day that has been burning wood for the last few years. Always had 4-5 cords in a pile about 30-40 feet from the house, usually oak and hickory. Someone else must have moved in cause I drove by a couple days ago and someone was burning the whole woodpile right where it sat. Made me sick.

 

[woodbooga]

Anyone else seeing this going on around your neck of the woods?

Nope. Not at all. None of the tree services around here make a practice of badgering former clients.

 

[BlueRidgeMark]

Nope. Not at all. None of the tree services around here make a practice of badgering former clients.

Oooohh! Oouch!

 

[woodbooga]

Oooohh! Oouch!

I kid only because we're buddies.

If I didn't hold ole av in such high regard, I'd have gone with the meaner yet more accurate term 'stalk' instead of 'badger.'umpkin2:

 

[avalancher]

If I didn't hold ole av in such high regard, I'd have gone with the meaner yet more accurate term 'stalk' instead of 'badger.'umpkin2:

ah, slacking off in your old age eh?

 

[Beefie]

opcorn:opcorn:This could get good.


Beefie

 

[Curlycherry1]

I got an even worse one for ya. A guy I used to buy firewood from had a nice rented yard where he could sock in about 600 full cords. Every spring he would get processed wood dumped and he would promptly pile it up in nice beautiful neat rows with air between the piles so it could finish drying nicely. By this time of year his yard was full and he was typically delivering 10-20 full cords of "summer" wood to folks like me. His yard would be at 90% capacity except for the 10% that would go out as soon as it came in to us summer folks.

Well, he retired and he sold the business to a guy that is a hack. He has logs, and split wood, and whole trees and a nasty mess in the yard of wood. He now heaps his wood into big piles to let it "dry" and I have seen the mold and muck that stuff grows on it. What used to be a 2000+ full cord/year business is now probably selling less than 100 full cords. The wood he has in his yard now (~200 full cords) has been there, unmoved since late last winter. The other guy would have moved that much wood just during the summer.

The new guy took a thriving wood business and turned it into trash. He has lost probably every customer the old guy had (he bought the customer list along with the rights to the rented land). His wood is junk. I stopped to get a closer look at it the other day and I could see gobs of black mold from my vantage point which was over 50' away. Granted we have had a very wet summer, but still, if the wood was pile up the way the old guy did it there would be zero mold on any of it. This wood was literally covered in black mold, every stick of it.

Sad to see a great business ruined by a slob.

 

[Grace Tree]

Nope. Not at all. None of the tree services around here make a practice of badgering former clients.

That's funny. We try to explain the realities of "one of my friends wants the wood" to the homeowner. We don't stack it but we put it in a pretty neat pile. We tell them that we're not coming back to get it if the friend changes their mind or only takes the small stuff and we must sound like we mean it because nobody has ever called and I've passed a dozen piles exactly like we left them 4 or 5 years ago. Before that we got all the wood we needed and couldn't give it away fast enough. Times sure change.
Phil

 

[discounthunter]

it will lay there untill some one splits and stacks it for them.

 

[woodbooga]

ah, slacking off in your old age eh?

yep. getting docile in my dotage. Been eating a lot of food with catsup too - catsup contains natural mellowing agents.

 

[wvlogger]

i am guilty i have 3 good oaks laying but my truck is messed up. I am going after mid september and i am going to cut till i can not get on the hill

 

[Iska3]

I see more and more of this all the time. My son lives in the city and he will stop every now and then and ask the people if they want their fallen or dead tree. 99.9% of the people have plans for the logs or tree. For some reason these people think their tree is worth the price of gold. My son was going to do this older couple a favor by taking down an oak and it turns out the guy wanted my son to buy it. So much for Craigslist.

For many years we would remove trees from a lot that my ex-boss owned and we would stack the rounds by his farm house. We must have had a good 10 full cords of wood in that pile. One day a guy drove by and wanted to know what he was going to do with all the wood. My boss wanted $200.00 for the pile so the guy drove off. The next year my boss raised the price to $250.00 with no takers.. Before I retired, I spent several nights burning that pile of wood. Yep! Mold, Rot, Punkey Elm and the home for all the mice in the county. Some people never learn..