Wood

This weekend, along with burning stuff, we split one of the piles of wood sitting around the farm. Usually it's oak, but a couple of weeks ago Art cut down a tree for a friend and brought most of the trunk home to split. Normally he only cuts down trees that are already dead and felt some guilt about cutting down a tree that was still alive, but his friend was worried about it coming down on his house and was going to get rid of it regardless. He had told Art that it was a hard maple, but it was actually a mulberry, which is fine because even though mulberry trees are fast growing they have really hardwood, similar to oak or hickory.

We got this pile split and stacked; it won't be dry for at least a year, but with this pile we replenished more than half of what we burned this winter.

Of course wood splitting is never finished, we have this pile yet to do:

This will take many, many hours, but spring is here and with the warm days and nights, I'm hoping to shut down the stove for at least eight months. Even if we had another month of winter we would still have enough wood stored to get us through. In other words, we're in no hurry to get through the pile.

Stretching before all the heavy lifting