Schmidlin Angus Farms

Cowpies to Treetops

In the Woods

Slow Fill

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Onto the story…

The Big Red Beast is done with her regular jobs for the season. The hay has been harvested and hauled. Rock loaded and spread along roads and pathways. This is the time of year when the old farm truck gets tucked into the barn for a good long rest while fall and winter months take hold.

Dry firewood stacked, ready to be split and loaded into farm truck

Last year we tried something different and used the empty bed of the Big Red Beast to store a supply of ready to bundle firewood. It gave us an extra five cord of wood holding power of dry, seasoned firewood in a space that would be taken up by the truck anyway.

I have been running into the same problem as loggers of trying to find dry weather to actually get the truck filled. I have to have several consecutive dry days in order to get the wood split and loaded into the truck.

Farm truck being filled with firewood.

The first day of work, with Marilyn running the Super Split at a frantic pace and me throwing the wood into the truck were able to get about half of the five cord loaded. It looked like the next day we would be able to get the truck filled easily. We moved the truck into the barn for the evening along with the Super Split and its a good thing we did because the next day it rained, and the day after that. It was four days before we could pull the truck back out and start loading again.

Front half of truck loaded with firewood pieces

This day we were able two get the front half of the truck loaded high but still needed another day to stack the back up to the top of the racks and place a plywood sheet up to hold a full load of wood.

We are now into our third week of trying to get this truck filled. Hopefully today is the day we can get it filled to the brim and moved across the river to the barn where we bundle firewood. Once in position it will sit for those winter weeks when we need the extra wood to keep up with demand.