Wood Cutting Weather

Southern Illinois actually made it to Sub-Zero over the weekend, and we took advantage of the weather to work up a tree that had tipped over on the pond bank. It has been down for two years, and this is the first time the pond froze over so we could get to the tree with a chainsaw. Firing up the Kubota Diesel was the first order of business, and a bucketful of hot coals under the oil pan warmed it up in short order so we could haul wood.

The tree was a gnarly old post oak, and the upper limbs were nice and dry, and ready to use. The trunk was over two feet in diameter, and even though I cut the rounds short, we had to split them in place before we could move them. The knotty post oak wood was all that our 35 ton splitter could handle. We were glad that we didn't buy a smaller splitter. We finished up moving all the wood off the ice after dark. The temp came up near freezing on Monday, and we had a wave of big snow flakes come through. Next week we will work on Terra-Firma again. One thing I realized as we cut on the pond is that you don't have to be careful about keeping your saw out of the dirt. "Rocking" your saw on ice doesn't hurt it a bit.

Monday's Snow