A Wood Workin' Day

On one of his last jobs of the season our neighbor, who owns and operates an excavating business, cleared some forested land for a house and septic system for a client of his. D and his wife don't burn wood so he asked if we would like the birch and maple trees he cut down. (The home owners asked him to remove the downed trees from the property.) Sure! We can always use wood so we gladly accepted.

With the time we've been spending on our remodeling, Papa Pea has had very little spare time to get out back into our wood working area to get this wood cut up. However, within the last week he did spend two really long days in close communion with his chainsaw and got the huge trees cut into lengths to be split. That in itself was a humongous job.

His work left two huge piles of cut wood in a bad spot. They are right in the path of where we push plowed snow all winter long. This means that we need to move the wood. This means we need to get it split and stacked under cover in one of our wood sheds. Before it starts snowing.

So far this early winter season, we've had only one snowfall of a couple of inches but that melted and our ground is still bare at this point in time. If we get snow on the ground before getting this wood moved, it will make splitting it and moving it twice as hard. Hubby and I spent yesterday working at the task but quickly realized we needed to call in reinforcements. So we coerced Chicken Mama into spending a couple of days of quality time with her Mom and Pop . . . working on the wood with us.

Do you see the size of these logs? Papa Pea said it was some of the hardest chainsawing he's ever done. What a shame these huge, beautiful trees had to come down. Many of the pieces are so heavy we can't lift them onto the splitter. We have to roll them up a plank . . . making darn sure they don't tip off and smash a foot or two.

Today it took the two of us moving as fast as we could on the splitter (while still working safely, of course) to keep up with our daughter who was in charge of taking the full wheelbarrows into the shed and stacking the split wood.

Here's a shot of Wonder Woman (aka Chicken Mama) stacking wood in the shed while the two of us were making like Energizer Bunnies trying to get another wheelbarrow filled before she came looking for it.

A picture of our daughter and granddogs. Notice the tennis ball in Maisy's mouth? She carries it around just on the off chance somebody (Anybody? Puleeze?!) will throw it for her.

So guess what the three of us are going to do tomorrow? Put in another day of fun and recreation on the wood pile.

What is it they say about a full wood shed being like money in the bank? We be RICH!