We are homesteaders and we are striving to become fully self sufficient and off the grid on a budget. This includes heating our own home using fire wood that we harvest ourselves.
We recently spent a week hauling trees from a neighbor's place. They had given us about 20 - 30 pine and oak trees, most of which were live at the time. We hauled many truck loads of logs to our off grid homestead for later processing.
We also brought home over 30 longer 8 to 12 foot logs to process on the lumber mill.
Today I fired up the old log splitter and ran most of the fire wood logs through it.
This is an old log splitter that we purchased when we first moved to Michigan about 3.5 years ago. I had kept my old engine from our previous homestead in New York. There I had been using a very old log splitter that I got for free. I had this 11 hp electric start engine I put on it. When we moved to Michigan we could not bring the log splitter with us but I kept my good old engine. This is the one I am using now.
I have quite a pile of logs for next year now. We will stack these up and let them dry out till then.
I have a pile of fire wood about six feet high by about 8-10 feet round at the base.
We are still very much short on cured fire wood for this year. We have been heating our home for a month already and we are burning through it fast.
You can watch today's video here: