This is our 14th year since putting in a woodstove. I have my process worked out for me pretty well. Everybody does it different to some degree, but with the same objective. Tough to beat wood heat when it gets cold.

I buy logs, mostly beetle kill, by the truckload. One load lasts about four winters.

Here's a few pics from this summer/fall, working on the firewood.

Husky 455 Rancher has been a good saw for my needs.


Making rounds,


Splitting, not a bad view from the office.




Stacking it up,


Should be enough with some surplus,


A couple woodpile pics,




Rat Patrol taking a break,




Show your firewood pics if you want.

Shane

Nice office !

Semper Fi

That looks, looks, pasha, that IS a lot of work!

Wood heat is great.

Nice thing you have going on there,, Thank you for your service..

It takes me about 4 cord to get thru winter. So I get 5 with the 5th being an insurance policy. We use go up into the National Forest & cut down aspen & spruce. But my wife & I are getting a little to old for that much work. I'm 65 & I'll draw full SS in February when I turn 66. Now we go over to the saw mill & get get scrap slats. They are already cut to 16" length & we hand load the pickup. That way we get good hunks of woods. It's $20 for a pickup load. We can load it full in about 1 1/2 hour. Much easier on us & it burns just as hot.. A good air tight wood stove is a must. We've been using an EarthStove #710 for the past 30 years.

back in the day have done that very thing, first to feed a fireplace, then a atlanta homesteader circulator.

even later a local pulpwood yard also started offering retail firewood by the pound.

weigh the truck coming and going. i bought mine from the old pile.

and did it in august too. yes, saved a lot of money & effort.

when snow was forecast, the line was long.

and it was all green wood by the pound.

Our local post & pole outfit in Clancy MT runs a decent firewood yard also. I think they also offer a cut price for seniors.

Same outfit I buy my truckloads from. Marks-Miller.

Neat pix, it’s a lot of work but there’s nothing like wood heat and sitting by the fire when the weather rolls in.

You've got the same saw as me and by the looks the same stove too. Is that a Lopi Republic stove ?

It's a Lopi 1750. Might be a Republic, I don't really remember.

Good stuff Shane. I used to heat with wood and put up 4-5 chords each year. Current house doesn't have a stove or fireplace so those days may be over for me. I enjoyed getting the wood in and do miss it so broke out the saw a year or so ago and cut a couple truck loads for the fire pit out back and camping. I'll need to go back out and get more next year...

Yep, same stove I have. There were three sizes of Lopi Republic stoves. One was the 1250, another the 1750 and there was a third but I don't remember the number. Good stoves. I bought mine 12 years ago.

speaking of burning (combusting?) wood in the house, looks like everybody has their exterior chimney pipe at least 3 feet higher than anything closer than 10 feet. i just hate it when wind gusts blow smoke down the chimney.


can't run my furnace fan for circulation, peculiar, but it'll draw backdraft out the stove air intake. so, just depend upon the overhead ceiling fan. works fine.

That's kind of what I recall as well.

We had a fireplace insert and heated with woods for the four winters we live in Portland in the early 80s. I cut and split about five cords of Douglas Fir every year. Wife helped stack it. Really enjoyed it, but don’t think I could do that anymore v

Since the emerald ash bore has killed all of our ash trees, that's about all we burn, its nice stuff to slit and burn !

great pictures

This one made some noise when it hit the ground, that's a stihl pro series saw with a 22 inch bar .
The big saw is the one that is stuck in the log the one sitting on the wood is an O28,

Good stuff MM!

Almost makes me wanna be cold.

I installed my woodstove in 1980 when I finished building my house. I've been using it ever since. Geeez, that's 40 years now!!! :-)

Great pictures. Brings back childhood memories of working in the wood.

That's some nice looking firewood. Looks dense and pretty straight grained.

Most of mine is lodgepole pine, some doug fir. Not very dense as firewood goes, but most of it splits up pretty easy, and has thin bark. The doug fir has some thicker bark though.

The worse is splitting some of the few really knotty twisted up pieces.

We get some cold spells, but it's nothing like Havre was. The hi-line is another magnitude of cold.

No wood stove to feed here, depended almost soley on wood heat at the last house and others before. I miss it. Especially this time of year. Got a gas "fireplace" here its OK but it ain't no wood stove. I've taken to keeping a small wood pile anyways for camping and such which is kind of silly cause there's wood galore any where i go pretty much, but it makes me happy
BTW MM 2nd row from the left four rows down right side there's a piece 1/2" out of line. LOL. j/k great looking pile. I remember someone, maybe a grandpa? Can't remember but anways the standard I was told is loose enough for the mouse to run through but not the cat. Words to live by

MontanaMarine;
Good afternoon to you sir, I hope the day's been a good one for you and this finds you and yours well.

Thanks for starting the timely thread for many of us and for sharing how you do it in your part of the world.

Up here we download a free firewood permit which allows us 10 cords of either standing or dead fallen wood. While it used to be any wood, a few years back some Mensa candidate decided we couldn't cut either Larch or Cedar anymore, so we have to do with Doug Fir for the cold months and pine or spruce for the shoulder season.

Here's a typical tree that came down sometime in the years previous to me finding it. That's 24" bar on the Husky.



Depending on how far one wants to drive, finding a nice sized tree near a road can be tough, but if one has the time to skid it out.



Last year I picked up a small trailer to haul some of the fire suppression pruning I've been doing on our yard Ponderosa Pines and for bringing firewood down. It's easier to load and unload than the back of the pickup, but of course less maneuverable than just a pickup.



The saws are a 372XPG Husky and a Stihl MS170 that goes along as a spare. The axe collection is for splitting, limbing and what have you.

The arms that accompany me most often in the mountains are a Tikka T1X .22 and a Chiappa 92 Trapper in .357 Mag that comes along to deal with the vagaries of life.

Thanks again for the thread and for those who've shared their firewood photos as well, it's interesting to see and read how it's done in other places.

All the best to you this fall.

Dwayne

Luv this pic...........

but I'm a lazy fhuucck

Wood smells good burning.......but NG in the house for me

Nice pics. That's a LOT of work getting it off the hill. I'm glad I can leave that part of it to the professionals.

Here's how I get it on the property. That's about $1200 delivered, and will last four winters.

He was getting big, but didn't make it through last winter. His back legs got all buggered up, infected, and he went down. might have been rut injuries.

Here's a couple of pics before he went away.

Had a sick young buck in my field mid summer....

week later.....dead.......fuggin' coyotes killed him.......

Or just ate him after he died......

Hate them SOB's.....

Cutting wood is the only form of manual labor that I enjoy but you guys take it to another level. MM that ultra neat woodshed is a sign of OCD or well harnessed aggression cool locale. Thanks for posting


mike r

I always look like a piker on there threads. Our stash of pine in Wabigoon.

Our woodburner.

I put in a woodstove for the folks about 16 years ago. I used to keep 5 years of wood split and stacked, about 15 cord. I would clear fence here on the farm and elsewhere. The farm was sold so I started getting loads of tie ends from the stella jones plant in Rockland. It is mostly oak scrap from making railroad ties. It cost 30$/ton which is a bargain and there is no bark on em and they stack great. I still split em , have a splitter but mostly split em by hand for the work out. I could not fell, skid and get firewood to the house from the woods as cheap as I can get this stuff. This year I traded out some concrete work for some farmers and they hauled me a couple of dump truck loads. Nice having a pile of oak before the snow flies!

MontanaMarine;
Thanks for the reply sir, I appreciate it.

We've got local logging contractors who will drop a load in one's yard as well. I was helping my neighbor with some of is that he got that way and like yours it was good, dry stuff.

As mentioned by other posters here, there's something very therapeutic for me in the firewood gathering process.

When we used to have horses, I was never satisfied until the hay shed was full with the annual load of bales we bought, the firewood bins were stacked full and there were a couple deer or a half a beef in the freezer.

Typically, I'll leave the wood at least 6 months and a year preferably with covers on the top, but in the wind to cure better and then I'll stack it into the storage areas on the side of the garage. This isn't full yet in the photo, I've added another layer on the outside of the right bin so they're 10-12" long chunks stacked 3 deep.



Thanks again to the others who've added their photos and thoughts, again it's interesting to me.

In closing, I'll say that's a really nice yard buck you had there sir. I always enjoy seeing wildlife in the yard - well today the yard bear was chasing a mulie heifer through the yard and I didn't appreciate that very much at all....

Thanks again and all the best.

Dwayne

I'm already bucking up logs for next year. Ive got three and a half full cord cut, split, stacked, and seasoned, ready for this winter. Mostly Cherry, Red Oak, and Silver Maple, with a half cord of Locust for those below zero nights.

Generally, two to three full cord get me through a winter, depending on the weather.

Great pictures everyone! MM, love the woodpile pictures with the wildlife.

nothing like burning good, dry hardwood...add a little white birch for fragrance, partial to the smell of maple burning, too

Great thread and pictures
It doesn’t get cold enough here to worry much about heating
How much is a cord?

cut up some oak today.

Maple happens to be my favorite. It gets burnt to take the chill off, as it doesn't seem to burn as hot as Cherry and Oak



A 'Cord' around these parts is a stack of firewood four feet high, four feet deep, and eight foot long, consisting of three "face cord."

Shane,

does that get wet and frozen on the end, or do you tarp it?

Or throw them in the stove with one frozen end?

I usually tarp top and sides of my pile, and have to dig for dry wood if I get a leak.

I'm burning mostly Gambel (white) Oak. Start fires with Aspen or Ponderosa.

i think you're right...haven't had a fireplace in a while, but think i remember it pops/cracks a lot, when not in the room, put the screen across!

I try and limit the pine as the pitch hunks things up.
White birch is ok but we get a lot of kills and they stay wet a long time. Hard on the saw...
Getting better at finding decent maple. A lot easier to carry sections of green maple than wet birch....

Major wood envy here!


I scrounge ash here and there all winter for my parent's Monarch out in the porch.

Enjoying all you guys pics and stories.


Sycamore, That wood is a couple feet or so under the eave, but it catches a little snow. It's not been enough to be trouble. The 'wall' of wood is facing SW, and catches any winter sunshine, so it stays dry enough.

Nicest places yet !

Very nice indeed.

A couple of late winter pics. I'll blow some of the snow away from the wood stack, as it is on the leeward side of the house and does drift there, but also catching some winter sunlight to help melt/dry.

I posted this on an earlier thread. 5.8 cords of dried madrone. I have another 2 cords outside on pallets and covered for the winter. We start fires with doug fir and then go to the madrone. We burn about 4 cords per year. It's been abnormally dry for this time of year, so I've been able to use the bulldozer to accomplish some additional fire proofing around our place and in that process start bringing in more fire wood logs. I like to cut the trees down in the winter time as they don't carry as much moisture compared to when they are actively growing.

Serious envy here.

But also a great feeling know this place harbors such people.

Nice stuff all you folks. I'm hoping my regular firewood guy can bring me some of his stuff that's been down for a few years already. As it was getting close to burnin' time a few weeks back, I got a cord from another fella. Not as well seasoned as I like it. I have it cross stacked sitting in the sun all day drying out some more.

logger, I used to love to get madrone leftovers on the landings at work, that and tanoak or bigleaf maple were the preferred woods down on the NorCal coast.

I got sick enough of tarps that I built a wood shed a few years ago. Damn nice to have bone dry wood all winter and not be digging it out from under a frozen tarp.

I feel the same.

...and thanks for the compliments on my little piece of heaven fellers.

Here I am last April sawing up a locust. This is the best firewood. Twenty years ago a blight swept through the NC mountains and killed them all. This one had been dead standing for years and it keeled over last winter. My brother and I each got a Nissan pickup load of this locust.

Splitting locust with the ten pound hammer and the aluminum splitting wedge.




This is my second back up wood pile. The main wood pile is my wood shed. My backup pile is 14 x 5 feet right below the kitchen window. This is my second back up wood pile, two piles side-by-side under the carport. These two piles are 16 feet long and 4 feet high. This pile is locust, white oak, and ash. If the wood has any rot in it, it does not go into my wood pile.



This my #3 back up Wood Pile. All my wood piles were full, but in June a giant black walnut keeled over down in the meadow. What makes this good firewood?
#1 Close by. Only had to drive one mile to get to the tree.
#2 Close to the road. You could drive the pickup right up to the tree. If the wood has to be carried 50 feet up a steep hill, Forget It.
#3 Decent firewood. Black walnut is not as good as oak or locust but it is pretty good. About 21 million BTU in a cord.

All three of my big firewood piles were full but I couldn't stand it. I figured someone else would get down there and cut up the big black walnut. I got my big ladder out and laid it in the yard, and I brought up 2 1/2 Nissan truck loads of the black walnut. Looks like chocolate to me I want to go out and take a bite of it.
This pile is 14 feet long and 4 feet high.

"I love the smell of two stroke smoke in the morning." I love to cut up firewood, it brings out the Neanderthal in me. I split it by hand with the Monster Maul.


I built this addition onto my log house five years ago. This is a great room for a wood stove.




Daisy likes the wood stove.

I’m one of the few with a wood stove here in Texas. We have a big fancy one like the one I had when we were growing up. Burn live oak and post oak primarily. We do actually use it to heat the house though, even though our winters tend to be mild. The house is all electric, so it definitely helps keep those costs down. I’m an arborist so wood is never hard to come by and it’s always free for me.

What is the story with burning pine/softwoods? I’ve heard people express concerns of increased likelihood of an overfire or chimney fire. I guess y’all just have to be sure to keep your chimney clean?

It's not peculiar. You don't have adequate return air.
Your fan is pulling air out of the room the furnace is in faster then
air can get in. Creating negative pressure. The chimney then becomes your sir supply.

I had that problem when I installed our furnace.
Also, we have a powerful range vent. Running it on high, we can pull smoke with it.
Opening a window a crack eliminate the smoke and allows the vent to work better.

Code now requires a fresh air pipe from outside to supply combustion air to
any fuel burning heater. That helps to eliminate this as their shouldn't be an air path
between the furnace and your house.

The easy answer is to picture air as a fluid, like water.
It can't leave an area unless it can be replaced by more air.

Simon,
Locust is the most desired wood here.
Some of the sellers of wood keep it separate and charge a premium.
Funny, they don't discount loads with ash or poplar?

I don't know wood from everywhere, but I do know ours,
and I'm willing to bet that you won't find much that's any harder than
dried locust. I have often thought I had rocked my saw, it just wasn't
cutting good. Then try something else, and it's fine. That dry Locust is just
so damn hard that the teeth don't bite it like they do other stuff. Even Oak.

If you Google it, you can find charts of BTU output of various wood.
Locust is near the top.

I am having some OCD envy.

Yes, dillonbuck, locust is about 29 million BTU per cord, nothing better here on the East Coast.
I know what you mean, that dry locust is very hard to cut. Will dull your chain real quick. I got about one more Nissan truck load on my property, dead standing, and after that the locust will be all gone.

I sweep mine twice a year, sometimes three times for the year.

Built a new woodshed this summer. The first one was scabbed together with leftover pallets and building supplies when we built the house and has a bad lean to it and is undersized at 3.5 cords. The new one should hold ~12 cords which should get us ~3 winters. By the time I had it finished enough to start loading it up fire season was upon us and I didn’t fill it completely.

As with most of my projects it went overboard and over budget with the addition of the kid’s play house up top. Anyone have a good siding idea for the playhouse?

Very nice places y'all. Thanks for sharing the pics.

I love getting wood...

OOps..Screwed the pooch on that last post..LOL















And my favorite helper..

Great pics Logcutter. I can tell you are a serious Firewood Man.

anyway to have made a gun stock out of the BW before you sawed it up? don't think our walnut gets that big in AZ, we might get some handgun grips, or model 94 stocks!

Sycamore do you want me to ship you some black walnut? I have a 17 inch diameter trunk that is 60 inches long.
That big piece would be costly to ship but it would make a lot of gun stocks.
I will cut you anything you want out of that and ship it if you will pay.

Nice work!

What variety of tree is the firewood?

I like the idea of wood heat, but it isn’t possible without modifications to my home. All of my HVAC equipment has draft requirements for operation. Fixed venting would be required to keep furnace and water heater running. The draft required for wood stove would shoot the pressurized interior design in the foot.

Nice pics, and very nice stacks... And you're so right when you said it's "tough to beat wood heat"! Nice job sir...

Down here in Texas, I’m still cutting and splitting firewood. Got about a half cord to go. It’ll be oak, since our place has a lot of it. Compared to some of you serious guys with 4 or 5 cords, I feel like a lightweight.

No shortage of oak trees to cut, which is good news and bad news. The bad news is that a huge old oak fell in a wet stormy couple of weeks we had. It fell on another big oak, which fell on another big oak, which fell on my fence. It’s a ginormous pile of oak trunks and limbs, which is the good news, sorta.

And, as I age, I notice that my old Stihl 029 is putting on weight.

Sometimes I cut blowdown fir, it is usually standing dead trees. I just spent 4 days sawing up the same tree and got 6 cords out of a big fir.


395 husqvarna is what I use for sawing, great saw.

This is one of my trucks, there is about 1-1/2 cords on here.

You lads are SERIOUS about this, I'm impressed! down here in the swamp we have woods about 200 yards from my house with plenty of deadfall oaks, etc. I just cut what I need then split and we do burn quite a bit but given our warm weather it's not much. Now at our place up in PA, we DO use quite a bit (again not as much as you guys because we are not up there year round), but i do have a gas operated splitter and we go through about a cord/year.

We heated with wood exclusively for about twenty years, then, about ten years ago, I bought a small pellet stove at an auction and I'll often burn a ton of pellets each year in addition to the wood. The pellet stove is good for when we are gone all day or for when it's just not cold enough to start a fire.
To those who ask why we burn pine: we burn pine because that's what we have. Lodgepole pine is the most common wood here and is killed by pine beetles at a pretty good rate. Deluxe wood is larch but dead standing trees are becoming rare. Red fir is decent wood and some like it better than pine. I've been watching one big larch for the last five years but it bounced back last year with more foliage than ever. I'll probably die first! Ponderosa Pine is pitchy, produces a lot of creosote and burns hot and fast. Good for staring a fire but not good for constant use.
My present stove and 24 ft. chimney have been in place since 1995 and the chimney has been swept... Never! I let the stove burn wide open for the first half hour each day and I never damp it right down and let it smolder. The chimney stays clean.
The pellet stove is vented into the side of the wood stove and, when the pellet stove is running, the wood stove is too warm to leave your hand on so there is some heat claimed which would otherwise have been vented out. In addition, if I fill the stove with wood, when I shut down the pellet stove, that wood is hot, super dry, and lights up like it was soaked in diesel.
This year, I had a couple of dead larches I had to take down in the campground and a few more scattered around the property. In addition, the beetles have killed of a dozen pines up on the hill behind the house and I've set the Cat up so I can winch them down to where I can cut them up and throw them in the truck. Once in a while, I'll see a tree which is worth driving ten miles to cut but mostly, I have enough right here. We probably burn about three cords a year to heat out small log home. GD

I have timber buyers that I do business have their loggers set aside oak in 6-8 foot lengths for me. When a logging truck is not around, I'll back up into their slot and the loader operator will pick up my oak with his grapple and set it down in my truck bed. When it's a little over truck bed height, I'll pull off and strap it down for the ride home. Pull it off my pickup onto the ground at home and it's ready to be bucked up into stove lengths. Generally I'll stack it in the round under a shelter and split it later when some checking has developed across the grain. Larger rounds I'll leave where I bucked them until the checking develops, then split into manageable sizes. I'm fortunate to have ready access to free wood. Three to five pickup loads a year keeps me topped off, especially with the mild winters we've been having lately.

Burned firewood my whole life, or when didn’t myself was around it growing up in my house and in Boy Scouts. Used it for heat and back up heat for last 30 plus years. Only time I did not have a stove or fireplace was when I was in school and lived in an apartment.

For storage I have used all sorts of methods to keep dry in wet months. Usually a combo of some sort of tarps; never looked pretty, but did the job. After a big 2019 snow storm here that made my elevated tarp structure seem inefficient, I decided I needed to build a proper woodshed. Even though the wood was kept dry ( in the snow storm) I knew I needed, or wanted to finally build what I always told myself I would do some day. So, I got to it and built this in spring of 2019.

It is 12’x16’ with inside post dimensions around 10’x15’. I had to put it on blocks because digging holes to set them in concrete would have been a major deal with all the tree roots around. Plus this way I could lift up the whole thing and move it if I ever wanted to. Inside this shed I usually stack the wood 6’ high. It holds just over 7 cords if packed. This pic was taken after putting up some wood the other day and there is right around 3.5 cords in there. We usually go through about 2.5 cords a year with the house, and camp wood; and fire pit wood. Our heat pump works pretty efficiently, so do not need to burn wood all the time.

Wanted the wood shed to look halfway decent to look ok on our property with our house that I built in 2005.

Burn wood - mostly Doug fir and madrone; and other hardwoods in this Travis industries ( same company that makes the Lopi’s that I used for years) fireplace insert. In this house I wanted a certain look for the fireplace, so went for a traditional looking fireplace as opposed to a freestanding model:

Also, I finally got around to building a more permanent fire pit in summer of 2019.

We have a lot of madrone trees up at the family cabin. Makes great firewood IMHO.

Our little woodshed holds maybe 4 cords. Darn near burned to the ground in a forest fire last month.

This isn't mine, it's the mad inventor across the street. Thought y'all might get a kick out of his woodsplitter.

Now that I don't have to any more, I wouldn't mind doing a little wood work...no need here and my saws are with my sons in Missouri. That's okay, I've done my share.

Great pics all!

Great looking woodshed there llama2, and your home as well.

Been working this pile of oak down for the past week. Have about 1/2 left[what is shown.

All white and red oak that has been windrowed for 2 years at a housing development.
Neighbor surprised me with a tandem dumptruck load of it.


He brought in a portable mill last spring and also gave us a few nice white oak slabs back in August. Those top boards are 18" +
Good neighbors are hard to beat!

That makes our woodpile at the cabin look small, i've got probably close to 2-3 cords already cut and split, just waiting on me to build it home (woodshed).

Thank you MM. I really enjoyed your pics of the job you have been putting in on your firewood- great job. This work helps to keep us alive and active.

We also came close to losing our house and everything around us last month on Labor Day when that big East wind event hit the western US. The fire ( Holiday Farm fire - 173,000 + acres burned) was moving fast towards our area quickly. It traveled 18-20 miles within about a day and came within (2) miles of our place on the ridge above us. Our home was in a level 3 evacuation within 12 hours of the fire starting 20 miles away. It destroyed a couple of towns E of us in no time. After all the work I have put into our place, we would have been heartbroken if it wiped it all out.

We were on vacation in Utah and Idaho when it started. Have friends and a lot of other people we know that lost everything. Thankfully there was only one fatality in our big fire here, and it is by grace that there was not more that perished. A bunch of people stepped up and helped get people out. Even though we are thankful to have ours still standing, we feel terrible for those that were not as fortunate. The destruction in that area and in the woods around it is incredible. It will not look the same in my lifetime ( I am 61). Fire is amazing what it can do. But I do enjoy a nice contained, controlled fire every night in these cold months.

is there anything you wood heat guys need to do for managing humidity in the house...?

If you don't mind a bit of mess, a kettle on the stovetop. Home Hardware sells a stainless that works as a water heater.

We put a water kettle on top too.

Can't talk for everywhere, but here any fuel burning hearing appliance has to
draw it's combustion air from outside. They install a pipe through the wall
that goes into the Firefox. My buddies fireplace even had to have one.

With that setup, their is no way for it to affect draft.


Mine is pre code. And my house is tight.
The stove vent fan or bathroom one can draw smoke out of my chimney.
If I close the caller door, the circulation fan causes negative pressure and
draws smoke from the chimney into the caller. Then it picks it up and blows
it upstairs. It took me a long time to figure that one out.

We would smell smoke.
I went downstairs to investigate, breaking the negative pressure.
No smoke.

Go upstairs. Maybe run a vent fan too. Smoke.
Repeat.

One day I was working on something down there, and the fan kicked on.
I saw something around the joints of the pipe.
Smoke.


Hmmmm?

Opened the outside door, it quit.

I
Will
Be darned....

Morewood
That was a close one with the fire, did you put it out or was it the firefighters?

Here is a question for you guys.
What is your method to measure your firewood lengths, or do you just eyeball it?

I was gonna go cut firewood today, but it is too damn cold out.....

little surprised it doesn't require more than a boiling kettle, but no big deal if it's not an issue

LMAO @ Hunts

Simon,

that's very kind of you, but I would be hard pressed to craft a 2x4 out of a nice piece of Walnut, much less a nice rifle stock.

something I wish I had started on much earlier in life.

I do like getting the firewood in every fall, and enjoy the woodpile pictures!

Sycamore

That's hilarious, Huntsman. Thanks for the morning laugh.


The entire area was evacuated the day before, 673. We couldn't get up there even if we tried. 50 plus cabins out of about 100 burned to the ground in our little private lake community. Judging from reading the sign on the forest floor I figure a crew was up there dragging fire hose around and they put out the fire just before it torched our place. God bless those firefighters. Thank you, men. Beers on me anytime.

That saw isn't very popular with the girls.