Wood Chopping

"Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice" is a quote, screen printed onto a pillow in designer fonts that is making its rounds on Pinterest.  I want to play with machine-applique to make a couch pillow of the quote in bright colors with a very diy aesthetic.  And after Saturday's adventures, I feel totally validated in sporting it on my couch. 

They are putting in a fiber optic cable along side the Elliot highway, and in clearing the path to lay the line, they took down many and many a tree.  Saturday morning I made French toast slathered in wild blueberry compote – quite possibly my new favorite meal EVER! while Raif took the little red truck to scout the cut.  He didn't get stuck, so after eating the deliciousness with coffee, we set off to get a start on the winter's woodpile.  To me, cutting firewood is a quintessential summer activity.  (Partly I'm sure due to the utter misery of one winter in the cabin when we ran out of wood, and experienced the joy of daily treks into the woods, through thigh deep snow, to find standing dead spruce.  I don't ever want to repeat that year's desperate winter wood gathering.)  So it was more than a little depressing and more than a little ironic that our tire tracks were the first marks marring a fresh light coating of snow. 

It was a cold day, never getting above the mid forties, and with a brisk wind much of the time.  Nevertheless, both the darlin'man and me found ourselves stripping off layers.  And chopping those logs will be just as warming.  My man with the great upper body strength and the deep love of repetitive physical labor will, no doubt, do most of that labor.  But maybe this year, I'll help. 

 

He hauled this log holding contraption on his back while I toted the chainsaw.  (I claim SUCH bragging rights on this find!  I found it at the TansferSite years ago!) See how it measures the log for you into woodstove size as you cut!

We spent a long afternoon digging trees out of the piles of stacked brush on either side of the cut, cutting them into firewood lengths, and stacking them to the side. 

Then we came through with 5 or so loads of the truck to bring them home.  Sunday, I went into town for a meeting, a shower, and grocery shopping and when I came home, Raif had almost doubled our Saturday's haul.  We guesstimate that we've got about 2 ½ cords waiting to be split and stacked.  The earlier the better on that front, so that it has as much of the summer as possible to dry.  Added to the cord or so that we have left from this winter (or will have left, if the weather ever warms up and allows us to stop making daily fires), we're just about half way to this winter's requisite woodpile.  That's a real good feeling for the middle of may.