Aerie Report, September 29, 2009

I checked the rain gauge this morning and it held 1.05 inches of water. That's from Saturday night through today although the rain pretty much stopped by 3 PM Monday. Heck, the sun even came out briefly to drive the temperature up to 60 degrees...right after the fire I built brought the house temp up to 68 degrees.

I may need to build another fire this evening. The winds shifted over night first blowing from the north as opposed to coming from the south like it had been all day, and then from the northwest this afternoon. That brought plenty of cold Canadian air our way and the morning low was just 48 degrees and the high never got above 55 this afternoon.

The weather hacks at weather.com say we're in for rain tonight (60%) and tomorrow (60 %) and it has started falling as I type this. That's a cold, raw rain, too. Tomorrow's high, they say, will only e around 55 degrees.

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After reading this article: U.S. Northeast May Have Coldest Winter in a Decade (linked to at several of the blogs I visit) this morning, I figured I better get out there and get some wood split. So I did. Wood definitely warms you more than once. Heck, I hardly noticed it was only 55 degrees while I was working.

My goal was to run this:

Cut oak, ash and maple at the ready.

Through this:

Two Ton Yard Machine ready for splitting.

And get it stacked here:

Empty pallet awaits filling.

I pretty much succeeded in the first part. All that wood is split. As for the stacking part, I'm gonna need a bigger pallet. I've almost filled the pallet pictured above, and there's lots more to go. I'd guess I've got maybe three to four face cords (that's two full cords) of wood split today. The stuff under the blue tarp is from last year when I could still bring firewood from the Bolt Hole. No more of that! The ash borer has caused both NY and PA to issue quarantines on firewood. You're not supposed to transport wood more than a few miles from where it was cut. I don't think it would really matter if I brought wood from the Adirondacks. Most of the ash trees up there went into making baseball bats and skis a long time ago, but I'm not going to risk some over zealous LEO or trooper going all nuclear on my ass.

Almost full pallet. A basic cube 4' x 4' x 4'.

And there's more to stack.

Luckily I have two more pallets and there's lots of tree tops still laying out there waiting to be cut and hauled in to the yard.

As for finishing the stacking...manana...or maybe Thursday. The hydraulic splitter may be a Godsend, but you still have to lug those rounds about and my back is sore.