Cutting tree trunks into logs

The weather forecast for rain all day today was wrong. We had sunshine and relatively warm temperatures for a good part of the day. I decided to go to the south pasture and cut a few trees into logs to be split later for firewood.

First I decided to cut up the cottonwood tree the beavers had felled a couple years ago. The first two photos show the beavers' handiwork. The first photo shows the top of the tree - or I should say what is left of the top of the tree as the beavers gnawed and removed the tree trunk from the very top down to this point before mysteriously quitting.

The beavers had also left a section of tree trunk about five feet long. I had taken this section in 2005 and kept it because with the fork in the trunk, and the middle where the beavers decided to start gnawing the section into two pieces before quitting, this made the section look like a human figure. I don't have a photo of this section.

From the second photo you can see how long a length the beavers would gnaw sections. I am amazed that they could move such large pieces of logs. These are not light pieces of wood, and they had to move these sections of wood a hundred or so feet to reach the river.



Here is the stump left behind. The beavers gnawed much of the tree trunk, then let a later wind blow the tree over. The second photo shows the outline where the tree trunk lay before I cut it up and removed it. The trunk lay past the tree near the top of the photo, and reached the dark branch laying down near the top of the photo. The section of tree the beavers removed earlier lay well beyond the dark branch as the reason the branch lays on the ground is the tree's falling crushed a number of smaller trees.



Another view of the gnawed tree stump, this time lit by the camera's flash. The second photo is the logs loaded in the pickup. Yes, it is raining now.



On the way home I picked up previously cut logs. This is the fallen tree I had cut up earlier this summer so the branches holding the tree up off the ground wouldn't collapse and the tree fall on any of my cattle as they liked to use the supporting branches as scratching posts.

The logs have some weight to them. Surprisingly the cottonwood logs weighed more than the pine logs, though the cottonwood was older as dead wood.



I couldn't take all the pine logs and these are the ones I left behind for now.

I unloaded the logs in front of the stock trailer in case I don't get them all split before I leave for winter. If anyone wants to steal my stock trailer they will have to move the logs first.

Funny, the logs don't look as big on the ground as when they were loaded in the pickup.



I have more trees to cut into logs. I had thought I would cut up two trees today but between the dulling chain on my chainsaw, the size of the trees, and the weather changing from sunshine to clouds, then rain, this was all I could finish today: one tree cut up and much of another hauled home.

Anyone handy with a splitting axe and want some exercise?