Fire wood

Warmth. This is a picture of future warmth. This is a pile of yet to be cut and split fire wood. The stack in the background is a hickory tree that feel in a storm mid Summer. The small upper branches we cut into excellent mid day logs. We have a small stove for the tiny house and as such we cut our firewood to short lengths. The foreground of the picture is littered with locus and black cherry logs. These logs were either too twisted to be made into planks or to thin in diameter to be milled. All of these trees were standing dead which has made them hard and dry, excellent to burn. 

Last Winter we urned a lot of poplar, as it was what we had from timbering dead trees. When I say a lot of poplar, I mean it takes a lot of poplar to be warm. The wood burns fast and does not put out a sizable amount of heat. This was news to me. I thought fire is hot wood burning is wood burning but it turns out variety matters. Hickory, locus, cherry, and oak are all good burning woods because they put out high levels of heat. Poplar not so much. The logs that I found most difficult to move due to weight and density. Those are the ones that I will be using for fire fuel from now on. High weight means either too wet to burn or heavy and full of burning potential. 

Second floor

       This past week has proved to be productive. Partly due to the threat of impending rain and partly because we made a conscious effort to build on multiple days. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring the camera for a daily snap shot. The photo to the left is our progress as of the end of the week.  The sub floor is done, save a small strip that will allow access to the crawl space. The second floor has half of the studs done. Yes, we are building the second floor with traditional framing as opposed to timber framing. Building the timber ribs was fun and interesting but there is no way we can safely raise ribs on a second floor. Not to mention we ran out of cured oak for the process. So, standard stud walls it is. We are using saw mill cut pine from the mill five miles away. 2x4x8s are 2.40 a board and that beats Lowes by a mile, not to mention it is locally sourced, cut and milled. Additionally, the wood from the mill is true cut as opposed to the "standard" lumber from the store that is labeled 2x4 but is really smaller.
      We were able to build a jig and finish half of our roof trusses this week. We lifted them into place with a reasonable amount of grunting and ladder climbing. The metal roofing and reflective bubble insulation was picked up this week and we will hopefully install it in the next couple days.
     Yesterday, amidst the rain, we burned four large piles of brush. Most of the brush was from clearing the site for the house. We also burned a large amount of brush from our recent clearing in the forest surrounding the house. The burning really helped to clean up the surrounding area and removing the downed brush from the forest will make room for our hazelnut planting this Fall.
    Below are several more pictures of the house in its current state, taken from different angles. The second to bottom photo is taken from the lower field and gives good perspective on how the house sits up on the hill.