Close Quarters

After our farm delivered two truckloads of firewood this week, stores were still calling the Co-Op for more wood. The storm, while it only gave us layers of snow and ice, slammed others with copious amounts of ice bringing trees and power lines down. We heard that several areas around our delivery area had been without electricity for the week. Customers were being limited to the firewood they could purchase from the stores we had delivered to and still the stores were out of product.

I looked at the possibility of finding some wood dry enough to bundle for another load. Out of the three cribs that had been stacked in the garage with heat, fans and a dehumidifier going for the last few weeks, I found two that fit the standards. The trouble was logistics. We had been moving the cribs, one at a time out to the bull pen for wrapping, then as we filled a pallet, moved the finished pallet back to the garage so the wood could be hand-stacked into the pickup. The time it would have taken to do this process would have been prohibitive. The actual wrapping would have had to have been done in the barn without heat or lights, it was not something we could do for the many hours it takes to fill even one pallet and we needed three (each pallet takes about four hours to fill).

We called an executive meeting and opted for a radical idea, turn the garage into the next barn. By moving the wrapper into the garage the dry wood could be bundled and placed directly into the back of the pickup thereby eliminating the tractor work of moving cribs and pallets back and forth from the bull barn, bypassing the need to stack on pallets completely and cutting out time-costly steps. It would also mean that we would be working in the comfort of the heated garage with lights to work past the evening chore time.

The pallet on the tractor front loader was the solid base to roll the wrapper onto.  Mike drove through the snow, slush and sinking roadway with the wrapper/bundler to the house were we unloaded it into the garage. Then he moved one of the cribs from the far side of the garage to right near the wrapper.

While I started getting everything set up to begin the bundling process. Mike shoveled out the back of the pickup that had been sitting in the driveway, it still had about six inches of snow on the cab and in the bed. He dried the pickup as much as possible then moved it into the open bay of the garage. The back tailgate was within inches of the wrapper as I bundled. Extra fans were set up to finish drying the truck.

The heat of the garage helped speed up the process but it was like working in a jungle with all the humidity. Within an hour the bed was dry enough to being the stacking process with the bundles I had stacked by my feet, on a pallet behind me, and on every available surface.

We were able to fill the truck and made the delivery to two stores the next day. This made for an unprecedented third load for our week. We cleaned out every last stick of kindling, premium hardwood and regular firewood that we had. And as it stands right now, we will not have any wood that we can bundle for more than a week.

I would like to take a moment to thank those who click on the icon to do shopping with the affiliate, (clicking on the affiliate icon does not make you purchase, only gets you the their site) and sometimes I get a small commission from your purchases if you do shop, without a cost to you!

As always, Prime and special codes work with the icon and you do not have to purchase any item that I promote. Please consider using my link when you do your cyber shopping. Thank you for your support