Wood extravaganza

Bringing in the wood for the year is always an adventure, especially when it starts late, begins with an injury (bruised ribs), doesn't move along well because of weather and includes a lost day because of a Jeep stuck on the back hill.  We finally had a nice, sunny day to take care of the trees we had cut down - three elms, one a massive beast with an 18 inch trunk rising straight up for 20 feet.

Pieces were already bucked to length and stacked/strewn carefully.  I borrowed my friend Tom's hydraulic splitter and we were off to the races.  Normally we have the system pretty well coordinated - I muscle the logs into place and Patty works the valve to cycle the cylinder.  We had already split the truly huge pieces, but there were still a bunch that needed to be split before they would fit into the firebox.

Moving the wood to the woodshed is excellent exercise - especially for Patty.  She often ends up walking from the back of the lot to the woodshed and back - a lot of times (it's uphill and about 200 yards) - otherwise she stands and waits 10 minutes while I drive the round trip on the tractor.  But yesterday we found another way to keep her busy while I was moving the wood.

She was able to wrangle the logs into place, split 'em and stack the splits while I hauled it away.  I had a hard time transporting as fast as she was splitting, and we ended up getting everything that was down put away for winter use. 

I'm always amazed at how adaptable that woman is.  She not only hauled and split at least a half cord of wood by herself, she also learned how to start the log splitter, and was analyzing the wood grain to get the easiest split and figuring out how small to split the pieces based on how wet the wood was and how long the piece was. 

Is it any wonder I love her?