Growing With Every Load

By Susan Schmidlin
Back on June 1st, I began building my outdoor pile for drying wet wood to standards of 17 degrees of moisture or less before bundling for my firewood project with OWC.

Oh how modest that single pallet of wood looked.

Along comes Gator (our ATV) with load after Gator load of really green, freshly processed wood from the logs that Mike has been cleaning up in the forest. It is not a quick process, usually only one load a day several times a week since I sort out all wood that is already dry and ready for bundling. The dry wood is stacked in cribs ready to be set alongside the bundler and wrapped up snug along with the label, but that is a completely different story.

This picture shows the green stack has grown by five pallets so far with more to come.

During more conventional years, this stack would be across the river in long rows while the drying process (months of curing) takes place. With the bull barn in a wild frenzy of preparing for remodel, we wanted this wood to be closer to an area where we could get to it rather that moving during inclement weather and reducing the amount of wet in the form of mud being tracked into the new workspace as it is being made.

It takes a lot of pre-planning in order to have a supply available for processing and delivery when it is needed.

This outdoor stack ( and I am really outrageously hopeful here) should grow to twice the side it currently is. I am looking for a minimum of 6 cord of wood for my backup supply after my 6 to 10 cord of dry, cured wood is bundled and delivered. I have a lot of work to do to get this lofty goal accomplished before fall.

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