We have A LOT of shagbark hickory and post oak trees in the 55-60 year old range. The Hickory trees in particular grew straight up in the 70-100 foot tall range competing with each other for the sun light. They make real nice logs for the sawmill because the trunks are in the 24" to 32" diameter range and straight as an arrow from base to the first fork. The average hickory gives me 5-6 mill logs that are either 8' 6" or 10' 6" long (The 6" is to account for shrinkage and any splitting during the drying curing process, so I end up with 8' and 10' Boards.) We are in process of turning a 30x60 pole barn into the new and bigger cabin. I decided at this stage in life the bulk of the job was better hired out than a DIY........ I ain't working 21 yards of concrete in a day by myself again LOL. So I have hired a local Amish family that has a strong reputation for doing great work to do the concrete work for the floor, the framing of the interior walls with my rough cut post oak 2x4s and to put the windows and doors in. And to put the two 8x8 30' long oak beams and ribs up for the ceiling using old school notches and pegs rather than nails and screws........ Not that you would drive a nail through that old dense post oak anyway. Their price labor, concrete, doors and windows is $19,700. The Barn is one I had built back in 2008 that has never really served a purpose other than being a catch all for STUFF. I had intended for it to be a open sided winter barn for the cattle and ended up doing something different. So there sits the $10,000 barn with, my old 71 Dodge Dart with the slant 6, lawn mowers, tillers and a Old baler that I am going to get around to fixing one of these days. So my DIY part of this is covering interior walls and putting something on the concrete floor and ceiling. Enter all those hickory trees, and the Old giant dying red oaks. A side gig I have been known to do for people over the years during the winter is make hardwood flooring. It is a slow tedious job but people pay well for custom walnut, oak, hickory and a couple of times Cherry flooring. It is a process that involves cutting the boards into strips the length and width desired, then running each strip through the planer to make it all exactly the same thickness, then the sanders coarse and fine then cutting either \ s or the tongues and grooves and then collecting a nice payday for my work. Same Amish family doing the work for me has also been the biggest customer for my flooring for their other jobs. LOL always makes me feel like I am living 150 years ago when they roll in with their horses and wagons and load up the bundles of flooring from the wood shop. Then sit around the shop table killing a pot of coffee and talking for a hour or so then off they go. And ummm yeah the war on trees LOL. These hickory trees are nearing the end of their lives and I am getting tired of getting bombed with falling nuts every fall Was taking a leak last fall and one bounced of my head mid stream and caused a secondary leak of blood running down my face.... a big nut from 90 feet up can indeed make a nice split on yer noggin. I think it was actually a squirrel agent from the Squirrel Empire that dropped the nut on me, but I have no evidence of that! Other than looking up and seeing a squirrel jumping from the tree I was under to the adjacent tree. So it could very well be the war here is really with the Squirrel Empire and the Trees are just a Proxy War. Anyway Over the last two days the trees have lost the war and I have made a real mess of about a acre and a half that I am going to spend the next 2-3 weeks cleaning up. Lots of brush to stack and eventually burn, firewood to cut and split and mill logs to sort, measure, cut to length and drag to the mill log stack. Got the logs cut and off the drive way Shame that log split and shattered at the base, lost 15' of good mill log on that one the start of the 8' 6" log stack Going to push all of these brush piles into the garden...... when I get all of the logs and firewood out of the garden and burn them in the garden. The soil in that particular garden could really use the acidic boost from the ashes. Hmm guess I missed a spot when I painted that building and really should trim that tin down on that old shed and finish getting that big pecan log off of the destroyed feed shed and farrowing shed. The old tin shed is my personal smoke house. Storm a few years back took that wall out and I just tacked old sheets of tin up on it to patch it up...... Guess I should actually repair it for real LOL. Anyway it seals up real nice and had sliding vents on the roof and smoke barrel on the opposite side. Hang my personal hams and pork sides and bellies in there and crank the hickory smoke up and cold smoke them to taste then vac pak them and freeze them. Two pipe off the barrel go down under the the wall and the cold smoke come up through the floor and control the thickness of the smoke with the two roof vents. Right now it has the barrels of feed that were in the smashed feed shed in it LOL. When its all said and done, I will end up with a whole lot of lumber and about 6 1/2 years worth of fire wood in the firewood barn and another 2-3 years of firewood in the fence stacks. My version of a privacy fence And its all being closely supervised by Dukey the resident watch dog of the pack. This guy lays on that dirt mound or sitting on his stump scanning and watching for something out of place to alert the rest of the dogs to. He misses nothing that is not as it should be.
Good one, thank you. Haven't made much lumber out of shagbark, not all that common in NH. Keep it separate in woodpile for really cold nights, burns really nice and hot. Sounds like quite a project. Dad always did a lot of cold smoking and salt curing and it sure tasted different than most of the tasteless store bought meat these days. Only thing he hot smoked was fish and some game where he wanted to be sure it kept. Love your "working " farm and it reminds me of home 70 years ago.
I can hot smoke in it as well I put a old cast brake drum off a semi trailer in it that holds a pretty good fire fire in it. Usually heat the hams up to 150 core temp with the fire the first day of the smoke, seems to prevent any spoilage or off flavors. Also done a fair amount of burying ham, jowl and fat back in a pile of salt and making the *Country Hams* and Salt Pork. I used to love the salt porks and hams but seems the older I get the less like that much salt. Wife won't touch them because of the pen mold that grows on the surface. Had a store here that carried KY salt cured Country Hams and I would just buy one from them when I had a taste for one. Then they stopped carrying them saying myself and about 5 other people were the only ones still buying them. Then told me about young people bringing them back demanding a refund because they had mold on them. Shagbark lumber is kind of neat because you have the cream white outer wood and then the dark reddish brown core wood. If I am making counter tops or cabinets I like to leave a decent amount of the outer wood and have the contrasting colors. For the flooring I will slab it off down to the hard core only. The outer wood rings are really soft and not very dense so won't stand up to being walked on for very long. The cores on the other hand are as tough as the white oak family. Most of the hickory logged in this region goes to the commercial mills and is cut into RR Ties and shipped off to be creosote treated. Curing and drying hickory with the outer rings in the lumber is tricky, I end up usually putting half a pallet of concrete blocks on top of each stack of 144 boards to keep the cupping to a minimum. I was born and raised Dirt Floor Poor by folks that were 60-80 years old back in the 1970s and 1980s and did everything the old ways, I did not particularly care for the dirt floor poor part LOL so worked to change my situation in that aspect. About the mid 1990s I decided technology was destroying America in particular cell phones and later texting........ and it ain't got any better since then. I decided I wanted to live the old way but wanted things like electricity and hot and cold running water inside that didn't involve a pump beside the sink that didn't needed primed before the water would flow or toting 5 gallon buckets of water in from the well every time I needed a bath! Sadly I am still a firm believer in outhouses and chamber pots but do have one modern bathroom with a flushing toilet on the farm in the commercial kitchen. And three strategically located outhouses with running water toilets that flush but they are flapper toilets that drop straight down into the pit under the house. Also have sinks with running water in them and no self respecting outhouse is complete without a bum gun and little buddy propane heater for the cold months. Ok my outhouses are a long way from the wasp and spider infested freeze yer backside off in the winter outhouses of my youth. I can go all the way back to full old school if I have to but until then I am quite happy utilizing the modern things that compliment the old ways and make them a bit easier. Every time I go to town....I seem to return back to my little world having a little bit less use for the so called civilized modern world that exist all around my little bubble
We weren't poor, just had no money, running water, or electric. Didn't miss them as we never had them, even schoolhouse had out door toilets, a pump for water, and wood heat. About half the food we ate is no longer socially acceptable, squirrels do actually look like rats, blood sausage, tripe, heart, tounge, kidneys, liver, salt pork, hams with coating of mold, pickled eggs, sour cream sandwiches on home milled and baked bread, pickled and smoked fish for lunch at school, a pot of mulligan stew always going on the back of the wood stove in winter, and on it goes. Can remember Mom going thru the chicken feed sacks at the hatchery to pick out the best patterns and colors and wearing the shirts she made with them. Feel the same way, its gone and is never coming back, but I ignore most of the world and such things as "survival food" that is freeze dried, over salted, low food value, and up to a buck an ounce. Potatoes, veggies, bread, oatmeal, squash and corn, etc, we eat very little meat, some fish and some chicken. Play with lathe, mill, raspberry pi, greenhouse, tractor, garden , etc and have quit for the most part watching TV and no longer get any newspapers. As long as it holds together for a few more years, I will let the younger generation sleep in the bed that they made. Feel sorry for them, most have no money, no future, aren't happy and don't have the comfort of believing in God and a long run future. Found out early in life that God seems to reward those that work and save and that being happy and contented has nothing to do with money or other peoples view of things. Guess for the most part I am very glad the way things have turned out for the last 84 years and it has been a very good journey, looks like you are reaching that point in life too. Good outhouse is nice, good dog even better, good wife is one of God's greatest gifts. Please keep us up to date on your projects, real life is so much more fun to watch than some stupid scripted thing on the world wide web of time wasting and TV.
