Me & a semi-pro woodsman pal have just spent a week felling, de-branching, & cutting up 35 chestnut trees at the bottom of our field. The average size trunk, at the base,was about 20" so we reckon on about 6-7 cords min.
Just need to split the bigguns & stock my share for use in a couple of years. Thing is, I love the woodies but hate the faff that goes with preparing one's own wood when it's, apparently, much easier to simply pay someone else to do the graft.
I've been cutting wood for about 16 years now & the initial enthusiasm of being self sufficient has long worn off.
We only burn about 2 cords max. pa so I sense a deal coming along whereby my mate finishes off the hard work, stores the wood in his huge barn & delivers logs for me to stock in our barn.
Well, they do say wood (and the preparation) fires warm you several times!
We currently get wood, mostly oak, in metre (ish) lengths - a corde at a time. Last delivery was 10th January (should have been last year, before winter, but the whole world suddenly wanted wood .....) The truck couldn't get the load up the garden to dump under the hangar like usual. So it's been dumped in the middle of the garden like a giant's version of "Pick-up-sticks". Wet, and green, we won't be able to burn it until next winter, so with son's help (Mr Bayleaf's back is no good for this job), we've been gradually moving 5 pieces at a time (and each piece is between 10-30+kg) to a new pile at the back of the hangar. First warmth.
Second and third warmth - sometimes a team of three, but otherwise placing pieces on saw horse for chainsawing (my battery powered Stihl chainsaw manages most pieces - I love it!) and fatter pieces then split.
Fourth warmth - loading up suitable "vehicles" to stack up in the lounge at one end of the house, and round to the front for the kitchen end.
Fifth warmth - enjoying the actual burning of the fires!
Yes, would be easier if someone else did all the work - if you can afford that.
Obviously more warmths if we've been out to our own woods and filled a van load with already dead stuff, but it's been too wet to do that. Must remember to do it in the drier months .....!
They might be hard work, but it keeps us fit, we get more for our money, and it'll apparently still be the cheapest form of heating for several years to come. We dry clothes above the lounge burner with a home-made wooden drying rack, heat water on them both, cook whatever possible on them, and recently started cooking jacket potatoes in the ash pan underneath - best ever!
We had our own woods and for 18 years we never had to buy wood - oak, chestnut, hornbeam and a bit of birch. Cutting and stacking was the norm. We even sold a couple of cords every year.
When we moved here 7 years ago, we no longer had our own wood supply and decided that we were of an age when we'd rather pay someone else to do the work : we now buy our wood (excellent quality) in 33cm cut lengths and all we have to do is stack it after being dumped, no problem. Yes, of course it costs more but as our electricity bill has gone down again, it's worth every penny. Our woodburner is very economical and keeps the heat for quite a while once it's gone out.
Like Bayleaf, we dry laundry in the sitting room which stops the atmosphere getting too dry and there's never been a problem with damp or condensation. In our last place, we had an uppy-downy thing above the wood burning cuisinière which was brilliant. Now that's something we really miss for many reasons - the wood-burning Godin which we bought at a brocante. It was 25 years old but had never been used, a real bargain, it was in perfect condition.
@Polarengineer That's what we had - a Kitchen Maid or something like that. I remember my parents had one above their Aga and there was nothing better. The French thought the kitchen was a strange place to have it !
Blaze wrote: ↑Sat Jan 21, 2023 10:49 am@Polarengineer That's what we had - a Kitchen Maid or something like that. I remember my parents had one above their Aga and there was nothing better. The French thought the kitchen was a strange place to have it !
Mr Bayleaf made this for my birthday, years ago - simple, but brilliant! It's directly above the lounge woodburner. Luckily we have high enough ceilings to allow for it - the only good thing about high ceilings!
Dryer.JPG
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I brought a nice decorative one with me when I first came to France. Both my French places had such low ceilings I couldn'g use it so it got sold at a boot fair. Judging by the amount of black dust the mrs. wipes off the surfaces every few days I'm not that bothered about losing the drying rack.
On my headstone it will say: Please switch off mobile phones. I'm trying to get some sleep.
Grab a chair, kick off your shoes, chill and chat.
