Waste Not, Want Not! A Maple Tree Becomes Maple Boards
If you've read any of my previous posts, you'll know that we recently purchased our new homestead in July. It was perfect...except it didn't have a garage. 'No problem!' we thought, 'We'll build one!'
We knew where we wanted to place it, but when the guy came out to mark the power lines, we realized they went right through where we wanted it. The next best place was the home of a young maple tree. Instead of wasting a perfectly good tree, we went out and purchased an alaskan chainsaw mill and milled the tree into 4 inch planks.
I thought I had pictures of hubby actually using the chainsaw mill but I can't find any! I'll have to be better about it next time we mill anything!
This is an example of the planks we got afterwards.
Last weekend we took the planks to our buddy's workshop to trim them up and plane them better. We don't have any immediate plans for them considering we don't have a kiln, so they'll have to dry naturally in the top of one of our sheds.
So out of the trunk we got a number of beautiful maple planks. We'll use the thinner branches in the wattle fence we're building for our garden, and the twigs will be shredded and added to our back to eden garden! Not a thing will be wasted!
I hope you enjoyed this #originalcontent and a quick sneak peak into our homesteading life and how we use every bit of what we can!
Glad to see you make use of nature's gifts. So many will just cut a tree down and let it rot.
There are so many rotting trees I pass in people's front years that I want to stop and ask them if I can take them! I feel like I would turn into a tree-hoarder :)
With the current cost of tree removal now a days, you may be doing a great service to them and yourself. Worse case they say no. What harm could asking do. Just make sure you don't need a license with local laws to remove a tree from another persons property.
Oh! I hadn't thought about that! Even if the tree is rotted, we could always use it for firewood!
It is worth it if you have the tools, time and desire to try and even save just a section of tree for reuse. It is all usable in the end, even if just for a bonfire.
Hey @aibell.
As I mentioned in the reply to your comment on my #introduceyourself post, keep in mind to feed your "Back to Eden" garden with mulch that includes browns AND greens, meaning branches twigs and leaves. If you go ahead with only browns, their high carbon ratio could bring you in danger of the chips locking up the nitrogen for quite some time, depending how rough they are.
Beautiful pictures in this post. Glad to follow along.
Hi again @my-permaculture ! We're adding chicken poop in with the woodchips as well as horse manure...what other kind of greens would you recommend? Cut grass or veggie scraps??
All manure should be aged well or it can burn joung plants (In your other comment I read that your aware of that). Basically you can mulch with anything. But the more trees you grow the browner the mulch should get. Yet, when starting a mulch patch start with a mulch that has lots of green in amongst the browns. Imagine you chip up a whole tree in summer. That kind of C:N ration (Carbon:Nitrogen) should be fine for a "Back to Eden" mulch. Generally vegetables like a more bacterial dominated soil, so mulch from grassen and greens is better. Trees on the other side like a more fungal dominated soil, so browns (woodchips woodchunks, branches and so on) should be mulched.
Maple is a lovely wood. I recently used some on a commission. Jolly hard stuff though. You can make a kiln fairly easily if you wanted to. There are a few different ways from having a box with a low heat radiator , a solar one that is basically a green house or a dehumidifier one. I have never worked it green. Good job on not wasting anything, that is definitely the way forward.
Hmmm. I hadn't thought about making a kiln! What a great idea! I was really surprised when we went to our buddy's house to plane it how wet it still was...maybe a month or two after cutting it down!
As I understand it, a 4" thick board would need 2 years of air drying and them about a month or so in the kiln. But I am not 100% on the drying times. Avoid drying it too quickly as it will split and warp.
You have no idea how many times I looked at my huge Maple that was overgrown in my backyard and the giant Honey Locust in the front yard and thought how many boards I could get out of it and now have sunlight for my wifes garden.....lol..... too bad I moved..... great way to keep things flowing.... someday that maple will be a great table or cabinet
My mom has a 300+ yr old black walnut in her front yard. It's probably $100k worth of wood! (Ok, slight exaggeration) but she hates picking up the walnuts from it every year!!
around here there are a lot of walnut trees and maple, along with locust.......I have a friend that has a mill and a kiln and I can usually get some nice local lumber from him.....