They say necessity is the mother of invention, but they are wrong. Laziness is the mother of invention. I guess in that regard necessity works too since if your lazy it's necessary that you find an easier way to do stuff. I'm always trying to do things the easiest way possible. Some people take great pride in doing everything the hard way. I look up to them in many ways, but I still prefer getting a lot done in the smallest amount of time possible.
Handling is one area I focus on. What do I mean by handling? Well, if you have ever worked a construction site or any job where materials are constantly having to be moved then you'll understand handling. When I have a lot of material of any kind, the first step I think about is moving it where it goes. My focus is always on where and how to move it so that it only has to be done once. It's actually a much bigger deal than it sounds and it's the first thing taught in many areas like construction and manufacturing. If you are always moving your material than you aren't producing anything so the goal is only touch it once and ensure you've put it where you need it the most.
I have thought long and hard about how to apply this to my firewood processing. It always seemed like so much of this work was just in handling the wood multiple times. It always bothered me that the firewood had to be handled many times from the tree being cut to the firewood being stacked next to the fireplace. I set out to develop a more efficient way to do it.
What's the best way to ensure once I split firewood, I don't have to manually move it again until it's going into the fireplace? The first part of my planning began when I needed a log splitter. There are many types but I settled on one for the back of the tractor running of the hydraulics. There are two very good reasons for this decision. The first is that I get to eliminate yet another gas engine to maintain. The second one is that it becomes highly mobile so that I can get it anywhere I have a log eliminating another step where I would move the logs somewhere else to cut and chop.
Continuing in this school of thought, I wanted a way to only stack the firewood once as well as only move it once. Luckily I had many pallets left after building our house last year. Many of them were more like boxes with sides made of heavy waterproof cardboard or sides made out of wire like a basket. This gave me the idea to carry a pallet box on the front of the tractor whenever going to split wood. I would split the wood and stack it in the pallet box, then carry the full pallet box of wood with the tractor to where I wanted to keep them. Now, whenever I need firewood at the house, I just use the tractor to pickup another pallet box and set it right outside the door.
It worked out really well this winter as I spent very little energy carrying firewood and always had plenty stacked up. Now that I have a sawmill I'll be building a woodshed to stack these pallet boxes in. This way they will last much longer. Having them just sit on the ground was leading to them starting to rot at the bottom. Not to worry, I have dozens of pallets stored that I can make more boxes from. When I need more I think I'll take two pallets and make one larger wood box so I don't have deliver wood as often. See, I'm always thinking about ways to be lazier! Honestly though, the more time you save, the more time you have for other stuff on the farm.
Here's the start of my woodshed... Well, after it goes through the sawmill at least.
