Gettin' Woody...

It's the time of year when the trails are too icy to run the dogs safely, but they're still good enough for gettin' wood. There's a number of fairly large spruce in the valley that have died off. Not sure why, but most are bigger than the average black spruce down there, maybe they're just timed out. Many have the bark starting to peel off, so they're pretty dry already.

 Here's one of the larger dead trees on the left with some smaller ones on the opposite side of the trail. I try to find groups of trees that can be bucked up and loaded on the sled in the same spot.

The trees are dropped next to the trail and bucked up into six foot lengths that'll fit nicely on the sled.

Here's another load ready to go. My "sled" is really a home-made trail groomer with steel runners bolted to one side, so it takes lots o' ropin' to secure the load. We burned a lot of wood with the cold winter we had this year; it'll help to have plenty of dry wood ready to burn again next winter.