In November, leaves fall off the trees and briars along the creek have died down. You can see dead oak and hickory that came down during summer windstorms. And if you are thinking of burning wood, you should know that’s hundreds of dollars in heat sitting there rotting into the dirt.
Getting fifty or sixty logs out of the woods, bucked up, split, and stacked before the ground turns into peanut butter is a grind. You spend half your Saturday untangling chainsaws from pinched cuts, cussing at stuck tires, and ruining your back before you’ve even filled half a trailer if you are not ready with a plan.
Walk the Woods on Foot First
Before you start dragging gear out back, leave the chainsaw in the shed and just walk the bush with a can of cheap spray paint. Leaves fal so plan the fall yard where they find convenient. They get smashed through fences, hang up in grapevines, or worse, get wedged forty feet in the air against a healthy maple.
Hung-up trees, widow-makers, will kill you if you ignore them. When you cut the base of a leaning trunk, all that built-up tension can kick the butt sideways into your ribs like a battering ram. So, it’s good if you spot them early
Setting Up Your Gear So You Aren’t Hunting in the Leaves
You know what’s irritating: it’s walking back to the truck every twenty minutes because you forgot a scrench or dropped a bar nut in wet leaves. Make a milk crate by adding two pre-sharpened spare chains, bar oil, a gas can, a flat file, and a couple of plastic felling wedges.
Keep that crate on an old piece of plywood or the tailgate so that it remains out of the muck. If you hit a hidden rock inside an old stump, it dulls a chain immediately. And if you try to force a dull saw through dead hickory, you’ll smoke the bar and ruin your forearms before lunch.
Swapping in a fresh, sharp loop takes two minutes if you have it right there.
Don’t Buck Logs Where They Fall
Most people make a mistake by cutting an entire fallen tree into sixteen-inch fireplace lengths right in the thick of the brush. Three cuts won’t tell you what the log is resting on; the wood sags, binds the bar tight, and leaves.
If possible, take an extra five minutes to limb the trunk, cut off the root wad, and drag the main log out onto the logging trail or into an open corner of the field.
Once the log is lying flat on clean, level ground, you can mark your cuts, stand up straight, and work through the wood without dulling your teeth in the dirt or tripping over brush.
Pulling Heavy Wood Without Ruining the Trail
If you keep dragging bare logs through damp topsoil, it acts like a plow.
The blunt front end of an oak log will dig deep ruts into your tracks that hold rainwater and stay muddy until June.
Looping chain can cause the front of the log to lift slightly off the ground, or use an old plastic skid cone over the nose; the trunk just slides right over roots and rocks.
Your tires won’t spin, you won’t tear up your paths, and you won’t leave twenty-foot trenches through the pasture.
Working In the Woods When the Weather Turns
On an open machine, dragging timber out of thick brush is difficult. Because of constantly backing down tight, overgrown paths where dead limbs and thorn bushes reach right into the seat, grabbing your jacket and smacking you in the face while you’re trying to look behind you at the chain
Once you put a tractor canopy up top, low pine branches just slide harmlessly over the frame rather than snapping across the steering wheel. It helps in keeping that cold, miserable late-fall drizzle and sleet off your neck when you’re stuck out in the timber an hour longer than you planned, coaxing a heavy hitch of logs up a slick hill.
Split It While It’s Fresh
Green hardwood splits better than the seasoned wood that’s been sitting around for six months. So, if you leave red oak or ash rounds out in the grass until spring, the sap dries out, the grain twists into knots, and your splitting maul will just bounce right off the end like it hit rubber.
Try to position your log splitter right next to where you drop the rounds so you aren’t carrying seventy-pound chunks of wood across the yard.
Roll the heavy stuff straight onto the beam rather than lifting with your lower back. If you’re splitting straight-grained ash or cherry by hand, a heavy splitting axe and a tire placed around the round keeps the pieces from flying everywhere and saves you from bending over every two seconds to pick them up.
Keep the Bottom Off the Dirt
One of the best ways to waste three days of hard work is throwing a pile of split oak straight on bare ground
The bottom layer acts like a sponge, pulling up dampness from the soil and rotting into moldy, bug-infested mush before you ever burn it.
Toss down a few old concrete blocks or treated scrap timbers to give the wood a few inches of clearance. Stack the rows so the bark is facing up to shed rain, and leave a few inches of space between parallel rows so the wind can actually move through the middle.
Air circulation is the reason why firewood dries, not the heat.
Don’t Smother the Stack With Tarps
The common mistake is wrapping a fresh cord of wood in a blue plastic tarp all the way to the dirt. It traps ground moisture inside like a greenhouse, molding the bark and keeping the wood wet.
If you want to cover the very top of the pile, screw down a couple of sheets of old tin roofing or strap a narrow strip of canvas across the top ridge and weigh it down with leftover logs or rocks. This will help in keeping rain and snow from soaking the end grain while letting the sides breathe and dry out all winter long.
Calling It a Day
Getting three or four cords of wood put up isn’t very tough, but it also takes an honest toll on your body if you try to muscle through it without thinking. So take your time around hung trees, keep your saw chains sharp, keep your machine covered from bad weather and low limbs, and stack the wood where the air can actually hit it.
By the time the ground freezes and the snow starts piling up against the barn doors, you’ll be glad you spent the Saturday getting it done right.
FAQs
What is the fastest way to dry out firewood?
The fastest way to dry out firewood is using a solar or custom wood-kiln setup.
How long should firewood dry out?
You should let firewood dry out for 6 months to 2 years.
What wood is worst for firewood?
The worst wood for firewood is the one that have high moisture content such as willow, cottonwood, and sweet gum.
