Harvesting firewood-Tough but Satisfying Hard Work

[Music] [Applause] all right guys we're gonna head uh up to my farm up in northern minnesota we've got about 160 acres and it's been our family tradition we harvest firewood every year [Music] okay so that's the widow maker that's the hangar what's wrong with your ears did you get something something's got to be bugging you huh all right guys we got to head out to the woods because we've got to harvest enough firewood to last both my uncle and frankie through the entire winter and they're not short up here in northern minnesota hop in lucy let's go let's go she don't want to go get in there come on hop up you can do it i don't want to hang on all right you're not driving move over we've got to harvest about seven cord seven to ten cord for my uncle and about the same amount for frankie and we're hoping to be able to pull that off in the next two days morning frankie what's the game plan i've been out about an hour i just trimmed up some more of them getting them ready let's get it yes again okay skidding so this is the mess of trees we've got to clear out we've got a field on the outside so we're gonna use that to drag everything out so that we can unblock it and get it prepped all right this is a big one huh all right can you hold the camera while i uh pull her back and so the trees are white and a lot of people be like oh they're poplar they're no good these are actually birch and they are actually pretty decent trees to use for firewood they're considered kind of a hard wood but they la they burn pretty good give off a medium heat and they'll last about two years about the third year they get punky pretty fast when they go downhill they go downhill fast so last year frankie went through the woods and fell them all so by now they're fairly dry and can be used for firewood i'm gonna let you uh reel it in so i can go out in the woods and watch it come down that's cool with you i'm going to say i can get out of the way so the first tree we're going to tackle is one of the widow makers that we found right away yeah you're good so a widow maker is a tree that when you fell it in the woods it lands on another tree and then what happens is when guys are out working in the woods they could bump that tree or bump a different tree and that branch breaks sending that tree down on top of them hence that's why they're called widow makers and there's more than one of these out in these woods so we're going to take this one down right away lucy come on get away from there come on wrong way wrong way so at first we used the wench on the jeep to pull it out but that's kind of a slower process so then we're going to hook the jeep directly up to it and just give it a yank my winch worked pretty good huh yeah it's just slower that's all all right i can just yank it out now right so basically i've now just set the wench to the side and i'm just going to chain directly to it and start yanking trees out good that's uncle tom i'll walk it into him so when i walk a chain in where do you want me to come through so when i walk a chain in i have to actually route the chain as i go into the woods because whatever route i take in is the route that the log will take coming out so i try to pick a route that's the easiest way to go this is a cool part i would go over okay don't matter it's still gonna bite you we didn't lose one tree with that method all right i'm not okay that's kind of cool so when it comes to blocking blocking so skidding trees doesn't mean we use a skid steer we literally are just skidding them out of the woods blocking means we cut them into uh bite-sized chunks i guess would be the best way to put it okay you want to just start with skidding or do you want to go get the loader or get that later well let's do this let's get the buns out then we'll go get the loader then we'll do tom block up top okay then we need the loader for tom yep all the time so we're gonna go start we decided to switch gears and start on uncle tom's so we run back to my cabin where i've got the loader throw it in the dump trailer and haul it out to the woods so we can start working on his firewood our plan is to get all of uncle tom's firewood done first because he gets a little weird about it and then we'll start working on frankie's [Music] well weird means he gets just nervous i mean that's how he heats his home right there is no backup it's heat with wood [Music] i love that mini loader i love that i freaking love that thing [Music] i don't know how i ever lived without it on how to run this thing okay i'm gonna let you run it while i uh thank you okay this is your this is your throttle okay right here your foot pedals are your forward and back this red button don't hit it if you do listen you're activating a pump and we don't have anything hooked up okay and then you're going to curl yep up and down up down you want to curl oh we don't want to girl nothing so yeah curl it side it hit it side to side now you shouldn't need to but if you do want to extend your whole boom out oh i don't want to do that okay good all right let's chain up i just wanted to see how well this thing could skid logs out of the woods and if it would be an advantage right see frankie did it just the dumbest route i didn't route this one to there hooked up yeah okay this ain't going to fly you rerouted this wrong one she's not going to do it guarantee ya i guarantee ya are you sure you want to double check this all right go ahead uncle tom i'm gonna get hit in the face with that tree if it doesn't why would i still stand there if i know i'm gonna get hit in the face why am i not moving at this point get out of there lucy get more worried about the dog hey look where you're standing see that tree above your head there that that burn oh holy crap all right yep definitely in a bad spot okay hold up uncle tom i'ma sure you just you get concentrating on something else and you don't realize you're like standing directly underneath the tree that's ready to go i don't even see that i love working in the woods i love doing work that is kind of outside of my normal work but i still get to play with cool toys that's really the whole reason i do this i don't need firewood i don't need a stitch of firewood i got more firewood than i can use [Applause] but frankie needs it uncle tom needs it and to me it's just therapeutic and relaxing it's just good old hard work i love it hey hey frankie you better cut down you better cut down that one right there it's not going around that zigzag right there right here you really think it's going to zoom oh i didn't see that watch out now frankie we're both next to that widowmaker so that's probably hey alcatime see if she'll give her a jerk [Music] yeah oh he's pulling frankie the thing doesn't have a lot of traction we got turf tires on it not tractor tires good just doesn't have enough traction to do it i got the wrong tires on those tires aren't gonna bite enough to get anything done i could switch them out but those are my those are the ones i want all right we just don't have enough traction for this kind of work i go i got to get the jeep any excuse to use the jeep as a work tool so they're not very big logs they're just realistically logs that uncle tom and frankie could handle without me being there because they didn't plan on having me there to help out i just asked if i could come along and then i asked if i could bring my dump trailer and my mini loader [Music] and they didn't turn me down imagine that [Applause] i was so sore after we did this job i could barely move for two days all right let's talk about safety gear and equipment um yes uncle tom's not using the right safety gear probably not the right cutting techniques neither is frankie and the thing is is i could have asked him to put on chaps face gear helmet but i didn't i didn't want to change the way they've done things i just wanted to show you guys how these guys have worked their entire life out in the woods it may not be right but i'm just documenting a different way of life is really what i'm trying to do so before the end of the day we've got to get that trailer completely filled up to deliver uncle tom's wood then the next day we start on frankie's stack i think frankie's getting tired it's not much better getting a ride in that bucket than it is walking all right guys well that's our our journey for today but tomorrow we're gonna be doing a lot more uh we've got a split we've got a skid we've got a lot more work to do so i'm going to take you along for that ride as well i hope you enjoyed just kind of sharing one of the family traditions the things that we've done my family has done and i just wanted to share the way they did it with you guys and uh that's it i'll see you hopefully on another one god bless and go get them you guys