Day 40 - Sawing Logs

this is the first day out on the 2 acre clearing that we've started after the excavator did a little bit of work so today's goal is to chop up some logs before I get started another cool thing is the first relative has come and visited one of Tyler K's friends happens to be her cousin and uh they're keeping each other occupied exploring the woods which I think is great couple of kids five and uh I don't I forget how old she is less than 10 five and less than 10 having a good old time out in the woods playing in the mud picking up and playing with bugs and sticks and goo and all this stuff and not glued to a screen makes me feel good because also they're really enjoying it too it's not like oh we're punished by by being out here Tyler has a uh I don't know if you can see it back there but there's her tractor her little tractor which is my old lawnmower and uh they're just splashing around in mud puddles having a a little bit of fun hey folks how doing hope you're all having a great day today behind me is the beginning of 2 Acres that I'm clearing for my shop our temporary living situation and the future of my business the future of living this awesome life here on 101 Acres so we're clearing 2 Acres all of the small underbrush is just going to be we're in the woods there's bugs going to be piled as it already is and burned there's just kind of nothing else I could do right now there's just way too much stuff the chip and actually keep so we've got a big burn pile started and you see a couple of these bigger trees already down um I'm trying to save all of the large large diameter trees which in this case are all Pines this is a planted Pine stand uh I don't know the exact number of Acres uh for all of this Pine but at one time somebody came through here and clearcut it destroyed the natural habitat here and planted Pines now there's a lot of good and bad about all that stuff but regardless this is not the natural habitat so clearing these two acres doesn't make me feel too too bad um so the Pines that are here were planted for a reason to be harvested at a later date well we purchased the property and we're not really going to harvest and sell all this like the original person who planted this planned on so I'm going to use all of uh I'm going to use all of the the trees to stockpile for ourselves I did a rough estimation of about 150 trees trees on this 2 Acres that are coming down big trees that I can save for later now these bigger trees are anywhere from I don't know 15 to 30 there's a couple that are massive in in diameter 15 to 30 Ines in diameter most of them being probably around 20 in in diameter and I estimated about 40t of usable log on these trees so four I'm sorry uh yeah 40 ft of usable trees and then to be conservative there I said three 10t logs per tree 150 trees that's 450 logs that I'll end up with conservative guessing well I just measured one of them for the first time and I got into the 50s so that conservative three logs per tree is probably actually Four logs per tree anyway we have a ridiculous amount of trees uh my daughter's tractor is about to pass me which is kind of noisy so there's that uh so we're going we're out here today my wife is working ahead of me with a 10-ft stick spray painting little dots at 10 ft from me to chop up as much of these with the chainsaw into much more manageable sections for our tractor and for the excavator and they're stuck I got to help them with the tractor all right the kids are unstuck and they're going Yonder wherever Yonder is Yonder is that funny word that I've never found a Yonder all right so here's what we're dealing with right we got the root balls and everything pushed over uh the excavator guy he suggested that he come in and clear the underbrush then he will push them over to expose all this that's easier to get the root ball out and then I can cut them up so as as I said my wife has already gone back or has already and she's already done a lot got a lot of this spray painted for me to cut up now this one is kind of a smaller one it's still pretty decent size log you know um that's probably 15 in in diameter and it's kind of a smaller one something like that uh so here's another thing I have a chainsaw I have a few chainsaws but I don't have any wedges with me I forgot my wedges so I'm going to try my best to not pinch the blade as I work or pinch the bar as I work and uh we're just going to drop them in place not moving them today I don't think we're going to move them today and here also while we're here we can get a good idea of what this land actually looks like as far as the vegetation goes you see all the Big Pines right there they're grown up quite a bit obviously so we have some nice good straight Lumber to work with once I get a Mill and then you can also see this secondary layer right here the top of the um uh the trees down below so all this is natural regrowth that would have been elim eliminated if this Pine stand was properly managed for commercial purposes so like I said this was planted for commercial purposes clearly or a personal investment where you harvest it down the road uh but it wasn't managed as well as it probably should have been I think it was you know uh thinned out at one time uh and then all these lower limbs on the trees cut down so you got some nice long straight trunks to deal with um but yeah this is I don't know how well it's showing up on camera this is a good representation of the two different main sections here we got the tall trees going up the Pines that we're saving and then all of this underbrush down here those the natural hardwood regrowth a lot of sweet gum and stuff that's just really annoying to get rid of anyway uh that's all down at the bottom [Music] how we count how old this tree is you want to count how old this tree is real quick 34 rings so this tree this tree is about 34 years old which is kind of what I expected I was thinking 2 5 35 years old who knows for sure well now we know for sure