dwasifar
ArboristSite Operative
My arborist friend down the block emailed me last week and told me he had some logs being dumped in his driveway, and did I want some? I said sure, how much do you want to part with? He said there's plenty to go around. So that evening we took my wife's little SUV up the block and found him standing amidst a driveway full of big branches already cut to firewood length, and he was bucking the trunk of the tree, which had to be at least 3' in diameter.
We took three SUV loads of the branch logs, and then later he emailed me again and said he couldn't get everything else split before he had to return his splitter, and did I want more? Sure I want more. So we took three more loads of big chunks that came from the main trunk. Beautiful straight pieces, most of them, splitting easy, just popping apart really. Tree seems to have been standing dead for a while; roundhead borers in the branch pieces, but no such thing in the trunk pieces. My guess is I came away with a full cord, or close to it, and if it ever stops raining long enough for these pieces not to be sopping wet, I think my moisture meter is going to tell me they don't need much seasoning time.
I'll post a pic of the stacks once I finish splitting and stacking (going slow due to rain and a persistent respiratory infection). But in the meantime there's this:
I drew that line for my friend's kids. I was splitting it in my garage because of the rain, with music playing, so I put on really old music to go with my really old tree. Feels kind of funny if I let myself think about splitting up a tree that was already growing before Lincoln was president.
Every year my arborist friend keeps me in logs, and every year I buy him a bottle of tequila in the fall as a thank-you. He's earned a good one this fall.
We took three SUV loads of the branch logs, and then later he emailed me again and said he couldn't get everything else split before he had to return his splitter, and did I want more? Sure I want more. So we took three more loads of big chunks that came from the main trunk. Beautiful straight pieces, most of them, splitting easy, just popping apart really. Tree seems to have been standing dead for a while; roundhead borers in the branch pieces, but no such thing in the trunk pieces. My guess is I came away with a full cord, or close to it, and if it ever stops raining long enough for these pieces not to be sopping wet, I think my moisture meter is going to tell me they don't need much seasoning time.
I'll post a pic of the stacks once I finish splitting and stacking (going slow due to rain and a persistent respiratory infection). But in the meantime there's this:
I drew that line for my friend's kids. I was splitting it in my garage because of the rain, with music playing, so I put on really old music to go with my really old tree. Feels kind of funny if I let myself think about splitting up a tree that was already growing before Lincoln was president.
Every year my arborist friend keeps me in logs, and every year I buy him a bottle of tequila in the fall as a thank-you. He's earned a good one this fall.
