It's very important to wear proper safety goggles
Oct. 26, 2011 (ShapeShiftas) -- The past few days I have been doing something I never would have done if I had stayed in the city. I have been splitting logs.
I am Woman, hear me roar! I can use Machinery! What stamina, what strength, what self-sufficiency! I am gonna' keep my family WARM this winter, and look good doing it, too!
My husband and I had put it off as long as we possibly could. It always snows by Halloween in Vermont, they say. It is definitely getting cold. We are burning through the wood from last year at an alarming rate already. We need at least 6 cords (however much THAT is), he says, and we have an oil furnace, too. We know people that have wood-burning furnaces and use ONLY wood, they go through like 15 CORDS!!!!!! (I think that must be an awful lot.)
And, this year it will be a huge hassle getting oil to our funace (thanks, honey, for taking care of all that!) so we are determined to use the magnificent masonry heater we have to do most of the heating. "Good practice, since the planet is running out of oil anyway," he says, to get me motivated.
We have about 25 trees to "buck" & "split." The trees came from some logging we had done on our property last winter, nice hardwood that needed to be harvested. We have hired our strong young neighbor to do the "bucking" (ahem), because you have to use the chainsaw for that and we are both scared. All we have to do is split and stack. Piece of cake!
I love the log splitter, it's really powerful but moves slowly and is not too scary. Plus, as you can see, it is red! (Don't let it fool you, though, it is a dangerous machine if not used carefully as friend Rob can most terribly attest.) It's really loud, but I can't find the cute ear-muffs, and I know my hearing is shot from too much loud music anyway, so l get Tad to fire it up so I can get to splitting.
-later-
How did the Pioneers do this????! They hand-chopped it?????!! By the first hour I am getting tired, but we have hardly made a dent. By the third hour the splitter is no longer fun, it's just loud, and those logs are getting heavy. By the fifth hour I am collapsed on the couch, filing down my broken nails, chasing the Advils with a hot cider-n-rum. Sort of picturesque in an excruitiating way.
My lame citified ways are showing, it seems, because Vermonters think nothing of doing this work. Dads teach their kids how to use a chainsaw by first grade; instead of sissy building blocks toddlers learn how to stack wood. There's a neighbor who comes out from the city (Rutland) to his land nearby, and cuts, bucks, and splits several cords for sale just for fun and to keep fit. (A cord of wood is about $150-$200 usually, what is that, like $5/hour? He's certainly not doing it for the money.) "Doing Logs" surely does give you a workout, and it must be good for you, because Vermonters do seem especially healthy into old age. That's it, I tell myself, it's Good Exercise, Vermont style. People pay money to get fit like this.
It's true! There are actual farm resorts, where people come from the cities for farm-work vacations and pay several hundred dollars a night to do it. After they split some logs and muck out some stables, they pick vegetables and kill some chickens for dinner (not entirely sure about this last feature). Then, they can schedule a massage or sit in the hot tub. I totally get this part, because I am in desperate need of some Qui-Gong Tui Na (that's Chinese massage) after my own log-splitting activities. Oh, yes, I would love to see those Chinese ladies now, and their counterparts in the nail salons, too...
I think this is a smart business idea, if you have a farm, charge people to come and do the farm chores, let the illegal immigrants do the spa treatments. (just kidding, jk, lol!).
So anyway -- after the first day's log work we have like maybe 1/4 cord. To give you an idea of how much this is, picture the wood bundles you can buy at the delis in New York. In Chicago, too; when I lived there I actually had working fireplaces in my apartments (+$250/month) and would pick up a bundle of wood, or a Burn-A-Buck, for festive occasions. I think we maybe stacked about 50 of those bundles' worth, good for maybe 3 weeks? More like one week in mid-winter.
It's just impossible to imagine doing all this log work by hand, like they did "back in the day," without tractors and power tools. The Pioneers must have been a superior species, we agree. We must be proof of de-evolution. We are Devo!
peace, Deborah
PS -- Thanks and welcome to all my new subscribers!
PPS -- Not sure what this has to do with pillows, except to say that I sure rested well on mine the past few nights. :)
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