The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

The big limb

Standing dead tree

When you heat with homegrown firewood, you're perpetually on the lookout for dead trees close to home. This massive specimen is just at the bottom of our goat path, meaning we have to haul the wood home by hand but the journey is pretty short.

We'd been saving the snag for a particularly cold winter, but a freak windy spell knocked down one big branch and moved us along on our harvesting journey a bit prematurely. Before the nice, dry wood could become saturated in our swamp, we set out to cut it into haulable lengths and then turn it into firewood.

Cutting up a branch

Mark sawed and I carried, and soon we had the whole mass up at our chopping station. Our electric chainsaw is a perfect fit for this kind of project since you don't have to struggle to start a bear of a saw for a few cuts. We did only get one segment cut to length, though, before the battery hit the recharge point. I'd say one more charge will let us finish the job.



Anna Hess's books
Want more in-depth information? Browse through our books.

Or explore more posts by date or by subject.

About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.


Anna, as a present for Mark, you could get him some chainsawing chaps. Nothing ruins a day like a running chainsaw slipping into your thigh.
Comment by Than Stuntz Fri Jan 15 12:16:30 2016
I just can't wrap my mind around the idea of an electric saw. Part of my experience cutting wood is the sharp crackle of a finely tuned two stroke chain saw screaming away....the smell of the exhaust...brings back memories of cutting wood with my dad. Sometimes I go out and start up two or three of my saws and just let them sit there and idle in a melodious cacophony! Mmmmmmmmmm :)
Comment by Eric Fri Jan 15 18:25:25 2016





profile counter myspace



Powered by Branchable Wiki Hosting.

Required disclosures:

As an Amazon Associate, I earn a few pennies every time you buy something using one of my affiliate links. Don't worry, though --- I only recommend products I thoroughly stand behind!

Also, this site has Google ads on it. Third party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user's prior visits to a website. Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to users based on their visit to various sites. You can opt out of personalized advertising by visiting this site.