I am further along than this photo I took the other day. I actually have the floor in at 18 inches from the ground, and the back wall in. I also have bolts in at the joints visible in this photo to hold the thing together. I am not doing proper timber framing, but I am building the thing in a similar fashion, jointing the wood together, and using the metal to bind the joints. It’ll easily hold whatever can fit in it.
So, what is it? As the title of the post suggests, it is a shack to hold firewood at the front of the property, and for sale. I will be putting an honor box on it and putting firewood into it. I am thinking of six logs in a bundle for five dollars, and a dollar per loose log, or six loose for five.
The wood won’t be the same as the wood for sale in front of the gas station, but I really should finalize the length I sell by measuring what is for sale there. I am thinking of 16-inch at the moment, because it will fit in anyone’s stove or fireplace at that length. I have always cut for our stove which will hold up to 21. In my mind, that means more heat and more time to burn. I have never tried shorter, but I suppose it would be easier to handle. Probably best I think of the girls in my family wanting to be able to easier to handle the wood when home alone in the winter.
Of course, all of this hinges on me getting the wood home, and I have been waiting for one of the kids to come help, but he has not yet, and I have been laboring under the belief that we were going to be started by now. So, that part of the plan has a kink in it. We will need to work it out, and part of the problem is that he works a lot and is up int he oilfields a lot. He has talked about looking for work local to his house, which would make it potentially easier for him to arrange coming down here. But till he can, we have got to work independently, and I need to get going on my part. I was hoping to have logs on the property by now. It is getting hot to do this kind of hard work.
I do have the chain sharpener now, so I should be able to keep chains going on the saws and cutting going smoothly in the wood yard. So that is a positive. It ought to help when I am loading smaller pieces or getting one down to size to drag onto the trailer in log form.
So, this rack in the picture will be out front of the house, and with an honor box on it to sell firewood to passers-by. Hopefully that will get some traffic stopping by, and maybe that will help call attention to my wife’s store. We also want to put in a farm stand, and that will also call attention to the other aspects of the farm. We’d really like to see traffic out front of our little farm in the commercial space. We have tried a whole year with the store alone and have had next to no traffic at all. It has been frustrating, so I am getting more out front on offer to see if that helps to drive business. I guess if nobody buys anything from the firewood rack, I can always convert it into a chicken coop after a time.
I have got to get some fuel into the tractor and get the forks on it and try moving the shack. I am not sure at the moment if it can even lift it, and how far I am to the limit. I have been thinking I would be able to move it around with the pallet forks, but it is turning out bigger and heavier looking than I initially expected. I might need to move it before I put any more onto it. The roof is going to weigh plenty still. The shack is in the Service Yard at the moment and needs to settle into the front of the yard along the side of the road. I will have it set back, and on our legal property, rather than the right-of-way for the road. There is space by front of the goat pen. That fence is set too far back from the road, and will perfectly hold the shack, and should be a short enough distance from the Service Yard to get wood out to the shack fairly easily.
On that note, I am working on getting a place set up to keep rounds so I can have them ready to take a next step when they get split. I think the rounds get stored outside people’s houses because they shed rain the way hay round bales do. I will get logs home and cut to rounds and set aside to start drying out till I can spend time on the log splitter. Summers involve periods of the day when it is too hot to work. And on that note, I would like to get a little lid over the log splitter and have some shade to work in there. Maybe that is a project to come. It could do with as simple as a few upright logs set in the ground with a sail on it to cast shade.
So, there is the project I am on now. I am also working DoorDash. That takes up most of my time now. But I suspect I will be able to get the shack in place and the walls finished in the next couple of days. The roof may be a frame with a tarp for the time being, as money is tight and a metal roof is not really in the cards. I could make shingles. But I will need to find a good pine log with straight grain first. Maybe that will work out. If so, the roof is free of material costs. If not, I will need to come up with some metal, hopefully used.
So there you have it. Firewood coming for sale soon. For home and camp use!