Before you know it I’m going to need to take a few test swings in mound three of Wood Pile One. I’m sort of afraid either way. One, if it splits that’s a good amount of thick and fairly wide bits to have to break down. Two, it hurts my hands, wrists, arms, elbows, shoulders and back taking a couple good natured full force wacks at it only to bounce off and feel as though I have shattered many bones, sinews, and tendons in my upper body. Honestly I hope it splits, but I’m not afraid to move down to the barn. I can take a day off from splitting to go pull weeds and run my gas trimmer to make it a nicer spot to work in. Full sun exposure in October and November aren’t a bad thing, especially if the mornings start at or near zero degrees Celsius. A little bit of blue skies sunshine can go a long way towards making a cold chore slightly less horrendous.
Today makes five hours this week, plus the three and a half from last week means I’ve just about completed one whole work day down on the farm, spread out over six or so days. I don’t move terribly fast, but the job gets done. Good thing I’m doing this all for free then eh? Hard to complain about my pace of play when I’m just helping out. Putting a body and a dog on the property so it doesn’t appear vacant. We do our walk about looking at stuff, then I smack the shit out of some cut up logs. Win-win in my book. Both the dog & I get exercise, an ungodly amount of wood gets split after years of it just sitting there. Plus should the world end we’ve got firewood to keep us warm for the first winter at least. Plus we can cook on it too. I think that works out marvelously.
I stay occupied with an easy yet monotonous task at hand, thereby focusing my efforts on productive things, instead of shopping, eating, or room scrolling on this phone. I sleep better at night because of the physical activity. The dog is less of a pain because he has time to explore and wander at his leisure. The farm hands are happy because they don’t have to swing an axe to split all this wood, not only that but they get firewood to warm up the house with or to do their own maple syrup operation.
My one gripe would be that the mosquitoes are still bad, and the wasps in the walnut tree are coming closer to me as the season progresses. I liked being out of the full sun when the days temps still climb above twenty degrees celsius. I sweat so damn much. I wore a headband today and whilst I looked a fool, it stopped my eyes from stinging. So that’s going to continue for a while anyway. I could ad a wrist band too for wiping sweat off my cheeks etc… stop me lifting my shirt to do so. Fat belly and all.
The Rstwing 4lbs mallet has come in very handy. I like that it was gorged as one piece. No neck wobble whatsoever. Short, compact and packs a wallop! The nine inch long wedge has proven itself useful. Moreso than the Fiskars wedge which is maybe four and a half to five inches long I’d guess? I’ve buried that one in a mushy logs more than once and had to struggle to retrieve it. Works well in companion to the much larger Rstwing wedge, and not instead of it. A great side kick, but not the whole show.
At some point I’m going to have to stack some of this wood in those green wire bins. I’m just waiting to hear if any are heading north to get stacked at the cottage and returned to the farm empty. That will alter my plan of attack, otherwise I need to find a wall or some trees I can stack this stuff between to stop it from rotting on the ground over the winter. That’s late October, early November Me’s problem. I’ll not either on it now. I will let the ideas percolate in my mind though while I work.
I could do with running the front end loader to go dump all the waste wood and bark piles that have built up since last year. No point keeping those around to kill the grass. That can go into the treeline to breakdown there. Give some little animals shelter and a place to hide. The bugs inside could feed birds and rodents and such. It’ll do the forest good to have the carbon and wood fibers go rot there. Maybe get some mushrooms, moss or lichen to sprout from out of it all.
I’ve turned in some paid work, now I’ll read and have breakfast. Welcome to Friday. Hope you have a lovely weekend.
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