Appreciation for those who prepare wood!

[mishellyshel]

I finally now know why wood is my biggest expense!
Anytime my dad give me money, either for petsitting his cats or birthday or holidays he always says "i know you are just going to spend it on your chinchilla;s" and he is right. i do. I told him my biggest expense is wood and he told me that he has several untreated trees on his property.

So I went over there yesterday and cut some Mulberry, Magnolia, Crabapple, Golden Willow and Apple. I never realized that taking off the leaves and cutting them down to size would take SO long. I havent even boiled and baked them yet. I only got a little of everything but the Apple, because I am not sure if my Kings & Princes will like it.

It was fun though and I got to hang with my dad for a couple hours which was nice.

Okay, off to work for a couple hours than I am coming home and doing wood!

 

[Essentia]

Oh just wait. The scrubbing, boiling and baking is the most tedious part!

 

[lilchinchilla]

Cutting the branches down and getting rid of the leaves is the easy part. It's the scrubbing I find the most annoying and time consuming. Have fun with it.

 

[mishellyshel]

Darn! I thought the hard part was over. Why do we need to scrub them, doesnt the boiling remove everything. Just curious.

I did a small batch of a few twigs my brother had once before so i know the temps & how long to bake. I'm excited to let them try some new wood and hoping they like it! Especially the willow. Its nice and thin and my dad has TONS of it. The Apple trees are the neighbors, so i had to snip a few brances on the sly. But they used to own chins so they said I can clip, just to call first.

 

[momenteller]

I almost posted something like this last week! I had a bunch of organic applewood from a friend's tree that was chopped down. It took me hours to get it all prepared and it was barely a cookie sheet full of twigs. I believe I'll go back to paying the experts for my wood. What an amazing amount of work places like PPBN must go through!

 

[jrosler04]

lol, I hear ya! We got down a pear tree in our yard a couple of weeks ago, and I went ahead & took a decent sized branch & cut them into about 2 inch thick slabs to make ledges..

I have cleaned them, scrubbed them, boiled, and baked them. We bought hardware, but I listened to my dad & I think I got the wrong stuff, so I am going to Lowe's (ALONE) this week & getting what I want to do it! HOPEFULLY the chinnies will get to use thier new ledgies sometime this month!! lol

 

[mistywaterwoman]

Scrubbing removes the dirt, and any possible lichens or whatever that may be growing on the wood. That's my LEAST favorite part, it just kills my hands.
Baking is not bad, it makes the house smell nice, lol.

Yep, it is MUCH easier to just fork over the cash to someone else for wood!!