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Tag: wood splitting

Ooh that pile is only slightly smaller after another 90 minutes.

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The third mound over here looking a little taste. (Fig 1.)
Where I left off after another 90 minutes of splitting today. (Fig 2.)

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.

You know I have to get my beauty shots in whilst I work. I think they work better without me in them. It really sets the scene! (Fig 3.)

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.

Ten sixteen litre pails of rocks.

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The aftermath of ten 16 L pails of rocks pulled from the front field at the farm over the course of the last six weeks.    (Fig 1.)

Ever since I started to split wood at the farm in mid September the dog and I have pulled armfuls of rocks out of the tilled field each weekday. Some days we found more than others, but I eventually wound up with eleven separate piles along the north/eastern edge of the front field where the apple orchard isn’t. Those are in the next field directly north, across the farm. I’m working closer to the peach trees hidden behind a hedge row out of the direct winds.

Anyway, I have been meaning to grab a bucket and haul them away, but I was more focused on the picking them out of the field portion, and not the hauling them off to the culvert to dump them. Less fun, more tiring work lugging 90 lbs buckets over to the ditch to pour them out.

But with yesterday dental issue I thought my outdoor time was going to be severely limited, but it was a quick fix (read inexpensive) and I had my child back to school before recess was over. This meant I could cut the grass one last time purposefully, and mulch the remaining leaves with the mower. We’d just had a big storm so the trees are fairly bare now. Which also means no more leaves to worry about until Spring time! At least on my property. I’m sure we have leaves to do at the inlaws, and the cottage too.

After that task was done I took the dog back to the farm and brought six buckets from my shed with me. I had previously filled two yellow pails conveniently left by the field already that morning when walking the dog. So not only did I move six buckets out of my shed, but I moved eight full buckets of rocks, then went back for two more full bucket loads, and voila! Rock job now done. Until I locate any more that is!

But I have paid work now. So no rocks, and no wood splitting to do until I complete this report. After this one there are only two more (that I know of) on the books for this year. I could get surprised with one additional random report, but given the current state of the economy both north and south of the border, I don’t hold out much hope for extra cash flow making its way into my pockets.

But I have paid work now, and that’s all that matters right this second. I had best hop to it then! Have a great Wednesday in early November 2025.

A holiday Monday: The wood splitting extravaganza.

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Managed to step away for a spell yesterday to run the wood splitter for a few hours. Together we split nearly two Cord of wood, with another two left to go. Not going to lie, my hands, forearms, back, hips and thighs felt every second of that work afterwards. Some of it just popped apart cleanly, and others (only a few) were that stringy fibrous mess that doesn’t entirely want to come apart. The reason, you may ask, why are you splitting so much wood? Well March break approaches, and with it comes syrup season. Which means keeping the sap in the evaporator running 24/7 for nearly a full week. Gotta have lots of firewood on hand to keep a three by six foot pan full of watery sap boiling for six or seven days straight. I do enjoy spending some time each year tending the fire, stirring the ice out of the sap buckets, filtering the watery sap, and keeping the levels up in the pan of the evaporator. It can either be windy and bitterly cold, or sunny and almost hot out. Either way the exposed parts of the face are likely to suffer a sun burn, even this late into winter. Hats, sunglasses, and covered clothing won’t help. The sun will find a way to bop your nose, chin, or cheek tops. Kissed by the UV rays from the sun. Unless it’s early morning, most can be done with a beer in hand. Just be mindful of the smoke, and heat & ash from the fire underneath it all.

Not only that but the buckets and spials have to go out into all the Maple trees, and teams will need to trudge through the forest to empty the tree pails into larger sealed buckets to transport back to the evaporator. Where we let the cold weather freeze off the water, and eliminate some hours of boiling, but pulling large chunks of ice out of the larger sealed collection buckets. Then you need to filter out things like bark, bugs, twigs, leaves and such, by straining through a massive cheese cloth sieve. Then into the large pan over the open flames it goes. Gotta keep the flames even under the whole pan. Don’t want a hot spot, and cold areas. Gotta rearrange the coals underneath constantly, and add new fuel spread evenly to keep the fire going. So much fun.

We have benches set up, and lights, and a massive stockpile of wood all within arms reach of the evaporator. If only the wifi could stretch that far, you could watch movies on your phone while working away. I’ve had the pleasure of starting the fire after a quiet night of letting the sap cool off. When it starts to get close you have to slow down, as it can kick off, and go from done to burnt in the flash of an eye. My extended family then drains off the pan into sealed buckets, where they filter it again, and finalize the boil at home in much smaller batches, on propane stoves in industrial sized cauldrons. Still smaller than the pan, but gigantic compared to anything in an average home kitchen.