Wood Pellet Day 2010

Rabbit food or wood pellets?

It is that time of year again. The leaves are changing colors, kids are going back to school, football is on TV, pumpkin spice coffee is available at Panera. I only know that because Laurie drinks it. I take my coffee light and sweet.

So what does  this change in season mean for me? It means I show my tree hugging hippie side and buy 4 tons of  money saving, non oil burning, pellets of heaven.  I have admit that our switch over to wood pellets for heat had nothing to do with any green environmental hippie movement. I simply wanted to save money and not have to cut  down trees, haul them out of the woods, split them then stack them. I wound up doing that anyway, but more on that later.

I have been doing Wood Pellet Day since way back in 2008. Ahh, those were days…renting Budget trucks, renting pallet jacks, driving all over town for no reason. It took me 3 years, but me thinks I am finally getting the hang of picking up and stacking tons of compressed saw dust.

Wood Pellet Day 2008 

Wood Pellet Day 2009

Unlike 2008 and 2009, this year I did not have to rent a truck. My friend Joe was nice enough to let me use a nice red flat bed truck. It actually came from his very nice boss from: Contry’s Automotive (845) 791-8710. If any of you guys breakdown and you are somewhere in the Catskills give them a call. Chances are it’ll be Joey to the rescue.

We got the truck around 8 and headed off to True Value in Pine Bush. These guys truly rock the casbah.  The manager, Al, does not make any money off these pellets. In fact, he does not have anywhere to store them. So why does Al and his employees go through the hastle of keeping a customer list, placing the order, then having to load the customer’s trucks ? He says alot of is customer base depends on these pellets to hear their homes and it is more of a service then anything. I think Al has got it right and it is also a smart business move too. Think I am going to head to Home Depot first? Hell no! Gonna go see my ‘pellet guy for that light switch or bird food, or batteries, or screws. I like to keep my dollars local, even if that means paying more. Which unfortunately this time it did. I could have paid 220 a ton from another place but I opted to pay 250 a ton because I know Al will have pellets for my next year and the year after that.

Pellets are under the black plastic ready to be loaded.

Load em up!

Haulin' 'em

The man in black

Around 10:30 or so, we arrived at Casa de O’Shea and began the simple unloading process.  Drive the tractor to the truck. Fill tractor bucket with bags. Give thumbs up to fat ass taking pictures on tractor.

Pellet Unloading

Drive tractor into garage. Then, stack the bags nice and neat onto pallets inside the garage.

All done!

Tired yet? Hold on there buckaroo as we are only half way done. Up the street Grandpa H has a wood burning stove and likes to do extra work for himself. Grandpa: Switch to a wood pellet stove!!

Anway, Joe and I hop on the ATVs and drive into the woods to meet up with Karl and drag out big pieces of wood they cut down earlier in the day.

Got wood!

There's Karl! With the Super Cart.

Joey’s ATV brokedown…so use the pick up!

Sharp rocks are tough on mufflers.

The pink ribbon is used to mark trees to be cut down. Grandpa uses it to hold up the man boobs.

Me, Karl and Joe attack the wood pile with the splitter

3 hours later….

Big pile o' wood

Grandpa forgot he had the ribbon on.

Very tiring day, but good times had by all!

But sure do wish we had this:

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