Splitting More Firewood

Today was a tough day. I cut and split a lot of wood this afternoon and my back is now sore. I can hardly bend over, but I think it’ll be better in a few days.

I was talking to Sam and his mom this morning when I told them that I’ve been seeing a lot of people taking care of next season’s firewood. She agreed and told me that their family does all theirs before Summer and before the black flies show up. Ohhh yeah. The black flies. And here I was, thinking that people are just preparing, like good boy scouts, when in actuality, they’re avoiding the black flies. I wasn’t aware of that, so I got to moving my butt.

I already have a cord in the back shed. I was going to move that up to the garage, but I decided I’ll just wheelbarrow that up to the house in October and November, when there’s no snow on the ground (hopefully). Once that’s gone, I’ll move to my stock in the garage, which I began today.

Remember when I started stacking that firewood in the back yard? I had that small pile and since I took that photo, I cut and split the lengths I had sitting in front of the shed. That gave me this:

Today, I loaded that wood, along with the pallets it was stacked on, into the back of my truck. My goal was to stack it in a mostly empty garage.

The garage is closer to the house, which is going to make it easier to bring the wood inside, come Winter.

I put the pallets down in the far corner and began stacking the firewood upon them.

After I was finished with that little project, I decided to move forward with taking down a few trees that have been staring me in the eye all Winter. One tree was a dead Elm and the other was a live White Birch that I thought was dead. My bad. It was tucked back in the woods though and you can’t even tell that it’s not there anymore.

I took both trees down, cut and split them right in the front yard. It took about an hour. Here’s what I got from that:

It’s not a huge pile, but that combined with the other small pile, combined with the wood in the shed, combined with the other small pile I cut and split in the woods today make a pretty big pile. I’d say at least a cord and a half.

Here’s what it looked like after loading it in the back of my truck and after I backed the truck into the garage:

Pretty good. I unloaded the wood and stacked it on the pallets.

I have to say, White Birch is the ultra primo when it comes to firewood. It cuts like butter and splits so easily. As I was splitting it, I felt like I was almost cheating. I completed the project very quickly. I also have to say, I sure am going to appreciate every moment of this coming Winter’s heat we get out of this wood. To cut the tree, cut the firewood and then split and stack it – yeah, I’ll be appreciating that heat.