What are you cutting 2024? - pics welcome

[Magicman]

Oh by Golly, it looks Cold there !! 

[47sawdust]

It's Weird being the Same Age as Old People 

I got a good laugh from that one MM.

[Magicman]

Instead of complaining and giving in to it....just wear it with pride.

[cutterboy]

GG, working in snow always tires me out.

We had 1.6 inches of rain Wednesday and it melted the snow. Then it turned cold and froze the ground, so out to the woods today for a beech tree for firewood.

As you can see this tree has problems and is not a good candidate for saw logs, so firewood it will be.


There are two more beech trees beside and near this tree that need to come out and if the upcoming weather allows I'll go for them soon.

  Cutter

[g_man]

Oh by Golly, it looks Cold there !! 

Feels normal - all what your used to.

gg

[thecfarm]

Gotta be dressed for it and cutting wood will warm you up too.    

[Resonator]

I find when I've got a saw that refuses to start in the cold, pulling that rope warms me up. Also pounding multiple wedges in a stubborn tree that doesn't want to fall, gets me warmed up too.

[g_man]

GG, working in snow always tires me out.

We had 1.6 inches of rain Wednesday and it melted the snow. Then it turned cold and froze the ground, so out to the woods today for a beech tree for firewood.

As you can see this tree has problems and is not a good candidate for saw logs, so firewood it will be.


There are two more beech trees beside and near this tree that need to come out and if the upcoming weather allows I'll go for them soon.

  Cutter

I like beech firewood. Most all of the beech I have is loaded with BBD cankers before they get that size. Yours look pretty smooth. Mine are like this.

 

gg

[Magicman]

Do those cankers make birdseye looking lumber?

[thecfarm]

No birdseye that I ever saw.
I cut a lot of it about 30 years ago for firewood. All split by hand. That stuff splits hard.
All mine have the cankers too. Well, I say all. But I have one with smooth bark. I did not know what it was at first.
The ones I got many years ago was big ones. Seem like a 18 inches across was normal. I remember them being tall and all rotted hearted.
I really can't remember where I cut all that and it was on this land too.

[Ron Scott]

Beech trees also provide mast for wildlife and the big old cull beech trees make good den, snag and cavity trees for wildlife. Leaving 2-4 such trees/acre is a good management practice if wildlife habitat is one of your forest stewardship objectives.

[SwampDonkey]

I once cruised a 50 acre square plot of hardwood that was full of old growth beech like potato barrels. The farmer was mostly interested in making more potato field. Shame to, that was all smooth beech. I have rarely seen a smooth one, but every once in awhile in among the diseased ones will be a nice smooth barked beech. Resistance, or maybe luck, who knows. The further north here, the better the beech. We had 450 acres of woods, a lot of it hardwoods and hardly any beech was in it at all. Mostly maple and ash. In openings on my ground, especially road side, I'll see a beech sapling start once in awhile. Blue jays, maybe bears, probably bring seed from the mountain nearby. I would imagine bears swallow a lot of seed without chewing it and it passed through. I've seen their 'beech nests' many times in the canopy of beech. They do the same to red oak. I have a red oak by the road and they tear the top out of that every fall that it makes nuts. It's one rough looking oak.  :D

[thecfarm]

@g_man ,I was thinking of you yesterday.
I had a fir, about 10 inches through, that had broke off due to rot and the limbs has been holding it up off the ground for years. I drove by this tree many times over the years. I finally got sick of looking at it and limbed it out and hauled it out for firewood. I always cut my limbs short, try for no more then 3 feet long, so it took some time to limb out. Limbs are small, as you know, so no firewood there.
The wood was nice and white. The limbs kept it up in the air all this time.
I have another that needs the same treatment.

[SwampDonkey]

I cut a big old fir down this fall for firewood it had stout limbs like a pasture spruce. There was ants in the but end for 3 feet or so. The rest was solid and made nice firewood, easy split'n compared to limby spruce. My dad would confuse those kind of fir for spruce because they grow in more sun and the needles grow around the stems like spruce needles instead of flat like growing in shade. They get a lot more limbs and bigger ones in more open conditions like spruce trees. The inter whorl buds that normally go dormant in shade grow out into limbs in the sunlight. Big wide rings in the log with all that big green crown. That was a 20 "tree at breast height and probably 70 feet tall.  It was ~50 years old. I see a big one near the main road that needs cut, but it's a taller one, has cracks in the but, but the limbs are 15-20" apart and maybe as big as your thumb. I really don't want to cut it because it's a nice looking tree standing there. I have lots of junk ones to cut first.

And sometimes you get a real bad limby one that had a hardwood or aspen growing over it whipping at the leader, short and fat and limbs with narrow rings in the main stem.

[g_man]

Beech trees also provide mast for wildlife and the big old cull beech trees make good den, snag and cavity trees for wildlife. Leaving 2-4 such trees/acre is a good management practice if wildlife habitat is one of your forest stewardship objectives.

I like to retain those big old trees that are or might become cavity trees. We have quite a few. Most are Maple though. The Beech die young - most do anyway. These are Maple

Same tree 7 years between pictures.






Once back pasture shade trees





This is a rare Beech on our lot - still looks strong. Never a yellow leaf on it.












One question I have about the Beech we have, and there is a lot of it, is why do I rarely find any Beech Nuts. Maybe once every 7 or 8 years and then very few. We have our share of black bears too, but no bear sign in the Beech ?? I blame it on BBD and poor soil but not sure about that ??

gg

[doc henderson]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdXzeHBlEEw&t=107s

[SwampDonkey]

bear 'beech nest'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxslDAW0aDc

[barbender]

Beech is another species that is common in Eastern woodlands, but absent from MN.

[SwampDonkey]

Beech is common here but no longer the stature that it once had because of the disease. There was a shop here that used to make bowling pins exclusively from beech. Bowling is not as popular these days as it was years ago. We have a bowling alley 30 miles from here in either direction. One in Woodstock, NB and one in Presque Isle, Maine at the Elks club building. I don't recall there being any others closer by.

[Peter Drouin]

I have Beech on my land, Some 30" dbh. Some good some not too good. I leave all the trees in bad shape standing for wildlife. I have only a few bad trees.
Unless there near my wood roads. I don't want them falling on my head.

[SwampDonkey]

There lots of old growth aspen nubs around 40" for cavity trees, most of them are on the ground now. There's blow down patches for bear dens, which I did find one last fall in under one. There old dead white birch or almost dead, been standing for 30 years with one live brand being supported on one side, critters can live in that one and a couple old white cedar here and there about 30" across to peck at, some horizontal. I don't worry about leaving junk, there's all kinds of it. I've got barred owls, bear, deer [passing through], moose, squirrels, hares, grouse, otter, lynx, coyotes, song birds, blue jays. No scarcity of critters. :D