I live in an area where over the last 2 weeks we have had an incredible amount of heavy wet snow. More than 34 inches. We have trees and huge limbs down everywhere. Lots of smaller (4 - 6 inch) branches too. Most of it is sugar maple, pine, tulip poplar, and at least one hickory tree. I'm sure there are other varieties. It seems to me I could make use of this manna if I only knew what to do with it. In my back yard I have two sugar maples that have lost some pretty big branches - I'm guessing at least one is 12 - 18 inches in diameter. There is one tree leaning that has a pretty good size burl on it. I believe it is also maple. So my newbie questions. Is there a preferred method to harvesting these trees? If cut into "bite size" pieces do I need to do something special to preserve them for later use? How long can the pieces sit before they are unusable? What do I do with the burl? As always, thanks in advance for you comments!