Rushed Kindling

Last year was our first year producing firewood for the Oregon Woodland Co-op with October being the anniversary of our first delivery. We should have remembered that at the end of December last year we were scrambling to keep enough kindling split, dried and processed into bundles to keep up with demand, but we conveniently pushed that thought aside as we concentrated on the premium hardwood bundles that are a new addition for our project this year on the farm.

This week has had the whole family out at the wood deck cutting and manually splitting the large diameter logs into pieces we could pick up and load into the Gator. Mike ran his logging saw because it is too heavy for me to even pick up, while Marilyn and I took turns splitting the rounds.

The wood we split was enough to fill the Gator bed three times. The kindling filled one crib (nearly a half-cord of wood), my green garden cart (about twenty bundles), the tan cart that was gifted from my brothers (nearly forty bundles) and many tubs of loose kindling that we use for fillers to make the bundles firm.

From this point we will be rotating the split kindling through the garage for the drying and curing stage before moving it out to the bull barn where we can process the product into kindling bundles. Currently the garage is a storage unit/kiln for the various wood products. There is a pallet of premium firewood bundles in one corner, two pallets of regular firewood bundles in another, one pallet of kindling bundles, one crib of firewood that is getting a final week of fans and heat to  complete the drying cycle, a pallet of wood already sitting in the bed of the delivery truck, and the green garden cart filled with damp kindling.

Both the crib of firewood pieces and the garden cart of kindling are ready to be moved out to the bull barn for processing into bundles but that may have to wait until after our delivery day that is usually Tuesday. If there is no order for us this week, we will be busy moving the dry crib and garden cart to the  bull barn, transfer the empty crib currently out there across the river. We will also move the crib of kindling from across the river to the garage to fill the space of the current firewood crib, and if there is enough room move the tan cart in.

Looks like another week of no room in the garage for my car, but that is what I signed on for when starting this project. Next year, the kindling part of the project will take a significantly larger roll well before winter gets here.

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