Find places to purchase logs for firewood in New England.

[bull]

My wood is right on the ground and I don't have much of a problem, remember the bottom ends up on the top of the outbound load and will more than likley dry before the customer uses them.

There is a reasonable grade where my wood is piled " gravel or stone" would also help,also plenty of sun....
Have been doing this for 30 years many of the same customer without complaints.

As you can see Im only 42 and the math shows I started selling wood at 12 which is correct, 30 years is not an exageration!

Wood rots and there will be mold, good sign that the wood is drying... when the wood drys so will the mold, you need to get your wood out of the shade, and into the sun. Give it a tan and the mold will go away..
A customer who complains is a customer no longer !!! >:(

[SwampDonkey]

Yes all those yard trees are slowing the drying process. Get it into the sun and there will be less problems. Wood is wood and no matter how you stack it, it gets mold. It's part of the decay process my friend. I stack my own personal firewood, I don't worry about mold. If you don't want mold then you have to invest in kilns, storage and fungicides.  ;D

[Ed_K]

 I'll bet the mold is on the black oak too  :D .I had that problem with the stacks in the shade. I told customers mushrooms is proof its drying  ;D and don't stack it in your garage if you don't like mold.

[RSteiner]

What amazes us is we see HUGE(40+ ft) piles of firewood all the time and it makes us wonder how they don't get rot and moldy bottoms, could it be because it's on pavement?   We currently stack on pallets but the issue we noticed was leaves were getting under and it's hard to get them out therefor the whole "air underneath" idea is kind of out the window. I was thinking of maybe putting the pallets up no cindar blocks to give it move room underneath and to keep it away from the dirt and bugs.  If we went this route we might try building small sides and then just trying to pile it instead of stacking. It would save us a huge amount of time....I think we need a conveyor belt too...loading a cord into a truck  by hand sure stinks!

There is a company near me which produces 100's of cords of firewood a year.  The huge piles are made from the conveyors form the processors they use and then pushed together with a big front end loader.  The method they use is the logs are stacked neatly in a long row and let set 6 to 8 months then processed and then they sit in the big pile until sold.  This didn't work out too well for them.

They used the front end loader to fill the truck so everybody got wood from the bottom of the pile which was mostly moldly and wet.  Only the wood on the outer layer of the pile was nice and dry.  To combat this problem they installed several drying kilns.  Now they debark every log before the processor and the chunks get piled in baskets before going into the kiln.  This adds a little more work and cost but the finished product is more consistant, about 20% moisture content, and clean without the bark and dirt from the ground.  I think they can dry about 30 cords per week.

You need sun and wind to dry firewood.  I tried stacking wood in a round pile once.  The pile held over 4 cord in a ten foot diameter circleand was over ten feet high.  The bottom was held off the ground by cement blocks spaced out so the air could come up through the bottom of the pile.  The outer circle of wood was horizontaly placed and the inner part of the pile had the wood piled on end which created a chimney effect.  It worked quite well except it was time consuming to pile and required working off a ladder and tractor bucket when it got above what you can reach from the ground.

I think a large carport type structure placed so the wind could blow through it with the wood piled on pallets might work best.

Randy

[Corley5]

My experience buying logs for firewood was this.  I bought the 1st batch to get started and went at it.  I was making money, paying the fuel bills, repair bills etc and was putting money in the bank.  Then I ran out of wood and to get more it took most of the money in the checking account.  I started all over again and did this several times that winter.  I did make money, the bills got paid and we had no shortage of food but there was no fortune made  ;)  That was just me as a sole proprietor.  The addition of a couple partners would make the pickings pretty slim. 

[SwampDonkey]

I know a lot of loggers that have become so frustrated with firewood over the years that they don't want anything to do with it.

[burnwood]

Well, we started with 9 cords and purchased a TW-1 Splitter.
The next year we sold 35ish and traded the TW-1 for a TW-5 and purchased a dump trailer.
We have 8 cords in log lengths ready for this year already and all of our equipment(trailer, splitter) paid off.  This year we're shooting for 60ish and hoping to roll that into a nice truck.  After we have the basic equipment we will continue to roll each years 'profits' into better/more equipment. Since we all have full time jobs we don't need the money and since we only do this on the weekends now it's not that much work, plus it keeps us busy.

We've talked about expanding but we're not sure yet, it's pretty cool to think we already have a customer base after only selling for two years, we've already have around 20 cords sold for this year and we have not even cut it yet.  ;D  Like I said our biggest problem is space, in MA land is so expensive, it would be ideal to find a local farm to lease us land but we don't know how to get started asking that question.  ???

[SwampDonkey]

Ah, the weekend beer money operators I've been hearing about.  ;D

[stonebroke]

I am a farmer west of albany NY. I have a friend who does firewood part time. I also have 200 acres of woods that need to be thinned. I am going to give him the wood but the problem is that I need insurance and nobody wants to insure a part timer. I also have plenty of space. when you approach a farmer be nice to him and if he lets you do anything treat his land and property better than if it were your own. Most farmers are nice guys basically we sure aren't in it for the money. We understand that wood is a crop and needs to be harvested. We just don't want to get shafted. Also A mans word is his bond so if you promise to do something make sure you do it. Most deals in agriculture are handshake, Cus if you have to have a contract you can't trust the guy, so why are you dealing with him to start with. Just make it worthwhile for the farmer. This doesn't always mean money. You might want to cut back his hedgerows( a never ending job) or help him in the fields when he is real busy. Sometimes that is worth more than all the money in the world.

Stonebroke