firewood Archives - SelfSufficientPath

Cutting Firewood in the Wild and Wonderful

May 6, 2019 Joe SSP YouTube Channel Leave a comment

A couple of my buddies have been extremely helpful as we moved into our new home. Many hands make light work. And I can tell you from experience, without those hands we’d have been in real trouble moving my machinery. One of my buddies has a cabin down in north central West Virginia (Wild & Wonderful), my home state. It’s right on the river, and it’s drop dead gorgeous. We, most frequently I, visit that cabin several times a year. So when he called me to ask for help clearing some downed trees and putting up firewood for the year, well, I don’t need a lot of convincing to go run a chainsaw in one of my favorite places on

The Truth about homesteading

April 18, 2019 Joe SSP YouTube Channel Leave a comment

Homesteading is hot right now. There’s no denying it. YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and all if their social media brethren are flooded with the glamour that is homesteading. RIght? Online homesteaders are always smiling, wearing clean clothes, and undertaking smooth projects that always turn out right. Oh, and the projects are always cool, interesting, and life changing. Right? C’mon! That’s all good and well. But it’s not reality. Homesteading is exhausting. It’s often dirty work. And believe me when I tell you things don’t always go right. In today’s video we’ll give you a glimpse in a typical (hahahahahahaaaa!) day of real homesteading. Bringing in some firewood rounds from the field to the splitting area, installing a range hood in the

The Best Way to Cut Firewood to Length

March 18, 2019 Joe SSP YouTube Channel Leave a comment

Reviewing the Mingo Ultimate Firewood Marker As much as I love cutting firewood, I hate measuring and marking firewood. Yet, I’m obsessed about a neat, orderly stack of firewood. Isn’t it ironic? Don’t ya think? So I started searching for the easiest, quickest, most efficient way to mark firewood. My goal was to put away my measuring tape and chalk and get on with the cutting. What I found was the Mingo Ultimate Firewood Marker. This plastic tool uses a can of inverted, landscape paint to accurately mark your cut points at 14″, 16″, 18″, and 20″-24″. It really is handy. Here’s the scoop: PROS: Fast Accurate Works in snowy / wet conditions No measuring tape CONS: A little pricey

Mother Nature Doesn’t Care That It’s Cold

January 26, 2018 Joe SSP YouTube Channel Leave a comment

Nature doesn’t care that you’re cold. Nature doesn’t care that you can’t feel your toes. When it’s time for a tree to fall, it falls. When it’s time for three to fall, that happens too. And unless you want to try to work around them for the rest of the Winter, clearing them up can’t wait until Spring. Today we work in twenty degree temps to split the biggest rounds from the biggest tree. On the upside, we completely filled up not only all of our firewood bins, but stacked three pallets about four feet high. Gettin’ it done, even when we don’t want to do it. And walking the path.