The Wood Pile

One thing about canceling my trip for next month. It gives me a little more time to do house projects.

I was going to borrow a woodsplitter to make sure firewood would be ready for my lovely wife. Most of it was sawn some time ago, is dry, but hasn't been split. Now that I'm going to be here for the fall I've decided to split the wood by hand.

Sure, using a woodsplitter would have knocked off the job in a day. However, it's noisy, burns gas, and I've problems with the fumes. The ax is a lot slower, but now I've got time. I'm not trying to split it all in a day. Splitting a few pieces at a time works fine.

There's a certain pleasure in splitting wood by hand -as long as you aren't in a hurry. Over the years one learns how to size up a log. With experience a person learns the best way to split a piece of wood. It might take just one good blow down the middle with an ax. A twisted knotty piece of wood might require wedges, finesse, and brute force. Each log is a small puzzle to solve.

The exercise is doing me some good. The first few times, muscles I'd forgotten about had a few complaints. Good thing I wasn't trying to split wood all day. Sometimes it's a matter of building up to it.

The days have still been nice, but there are frost warnings at night. It's good to have the woodstove going again.

-Sixbears