Harvesting wood for building

Hi there!!  I was wondering any of you have used trees from your land to build with...  We have some pines that grew very tall and tend to blow over when the wind blows.We would like to have someone with a portable saw mill come and cut them into lumber.  Are there special drying techniques for the lumber?  Anyone have some thoughts?  Thanks

Yes, we do. Big topic on how to harvest wood. I would recommend going to the forestry forum to ask this question, lots of people there who have done just this - and lots of people with portable sawmills you can hook up with.

Drying schedules depend on what is cut, what the temperature is, how you plan on drying (air dry, kiln), how thick they are, etc.

There are people doing post and beam, and if I recall correctly, you don't completely dry for that method.

     Trees which have blown down will dry faster if you leave them in place rather than immediately bucking them up into logs. If most of the roots are severed the leaves or needles continue to transpire which sucks the moisture out of the tree much faster than it would leave a log. And the moisture will leave the wood more evenly so that you don't get dry checking at both ends  while the center of the log is still wet, as happens with fresh logs.  When cutting maple and alder for firewood I leave the branches on until the leaves go completely dry. This produces dry firewood in short order and any pieces which are good for turning or other woodworking purposes have much less checking.

    This method is not advisable for very large diameter firewood since dry wood is more difficult to split.

thank you for your responses and I have posted a question forestry forum.  We are looking for someone with a portable mill who is in this area.  As far as felling trees, my husband can take them down to start the drying process!!

heres one book that might help:

http://kadbudugorjeligradovi.tumblr.com/post/9297094943

pine wood is excellent for building, its rasin preserves it for long time. for drying - i guess is better to dry complete logs and then cut, since planks from fresh wood usualy twist a lot.