Lull Between Deliveries

We have had the last couple of weeks off from delivering firewood. The pickup being tied up with the stock trailer for moving weaning critters and hauling others to market and transporting grain had the pickup pretty busy. While we attended to the other farm duties, members of the Co-Op were able to fill the void and get all the orders fulfilled before the Holiday. This year we have a couple of new producers on board and the struggle to keep up has been quite manageable so far.

While we were not delivering, I have been doing a little stockpiling in preparation of winter time orders. I had fallen behind on having enough kindling split and dry for processing into bundles and have been concentrating my efforts on rectifying that issue. Remember the big tree on the top of the hill earlier in the year that had been hit by a falling tree and there was a more than a log length of splintered wood that needed to be moved out of the forest?

It took several days of cutting and hauling loads by the Gator-full down the hill but I stowed it all away in the corner of the barn with this exact plan in mind, I considered it my winter stash. I have been working my way through slabbed pieces and rounds that I had split into 6ths or 8ths for handling and split them in the comfort of the barn with the Super Split table-top splitter.

This is also a limited time activity, I usually only work for about a half hour at a time on this project since it is my window of opportunity between first daylight and the next scouting expedition. I have been walking across the bridge and over to the main fields to check for the pesky herd of elk that have been making a nuisance of themselves. It has been hard to count the critters since they move through trees and brush but it looks like about 60 in this bunch and they have been quite adamant about eating every last spear of grass out of our hay fields. At first light, if I see any of the dirty buggers, I walk back across the bridge to grab the Gator, the whistle and the dogs to make a whooping, whistling, barking, revving, nuisance of myself in order to get the critters out of my hay fields. If I do not spot any intruders at first light, I spend a quality half hour in the barn splitting kindling and then go in search of critters a second time.

They are a crafty bunch and sometimes I can catch them as they are beginning to breach the fence line. By the signs left in the field of mushy footie prints, clipped grass and piles of elk poop, the herd has been more successful at avoiding my interruptions than I have been at shooing out of the area. However, their time is coming with LOP (landowner preference) and damage tags that will need to be filled over the next couple of months by sneakier souls than I.

As for the kindling with my limited timeframes, I now have a supply that should last me through the next few weeks of deliveries and the pickup is free from hauling duties so our firewood project should be back to (fairly) normal.