It always seems impossible until it’s done.
Nelson Mandela
I have dreaded this day, I have put it off as long as I possibly could. I have no choice. Today my arm muscles and joints in both arms all the way to the shoulder joint are extremely sore. It takes me 5 minutes to get up off my knees. I suspect some form of dystrophy. Swinging a chainsaw, splitting and getting that inside will be a challenge, to say the minimum.
I have been spared the snow, for now, that is happening just a few miles south of here. The cold is a different story temperature will drop to a forecasted -14 which really means -20 or worse here.
Today I have to chainsaw, transport, generate, split transport again and start the winter fire that needs to keep burning until May. It means that every day I have to go out and do this. At least until I run out of wood to burn. I calculate that will be December, just before the coldest months. I really don’t know how this will get done, but I do know that if I don’t I won’t survive the winter.
Just finished the first stage, chainsawing the wood. It was far worse than I expected. Just carrying the chainsaw out there was painful. Pulling the starter rope twenty times till it started on fuel that was six months old, that was amazing when it did start. I had no idea it would, just faith. I did thirty or more cuts before the chain said nope I am too dull to continue. I staggered back to the garage shutting off the motor about halfway down the walk. I think I was just too shocked I was able to do that much cutting on the first time out this season.
I had to keep going, I loaded the wheelbarrow with the small logs, they would become my emergency logs later. The emergencies always come, unexpected blizzards, injuries and worse. One year I slipped on the ice and broke three ribs. I had to wrestle the electric wood splitter into my living room and split inside for a few months.
I unloaded the little logs and told myself I needed to keep going. I loaded the wheelbarrow with bigger logs that were heavy with moisture. I got them inside and was ready to collapse. I made it upstairs to my desk, so I can record these words and add the one picture of the heavier logs. They were maybe enough to last 24 hours if the temp stayed the same but it won’t, it was going to get cold.
After a rest I need to go down unload the heavy’s and split them, then put them back in the wheelbarrow to transport inside. Oh yeah, I needed to start the gen. The gen was running rough. I tried to repair them using instructions I found on YouTube. I made it better but it was far from full power. I checked the price of a new carb on Amazon, it was half the price of a new generator. I did find a cheapo carb for 40 bucks. I ordered that and hoped it would work. I had to hope and pray that I would be able to split wood using the electric splitter. If not it was going to be painful doing it the way I have always done that, by hand with a maul. My body just can’t survive that anymore.
The video below was the winter of 2018.
Soon it was time to find out if the gen would do the job, I am still resting from the cutting, it is almost lunchtime. I had to keep it light, so I could keep working.
Back inside, back is hurting, arms are hurting, everything is hurting. I am not unhappy with the results. I have enough firewood inside for the night. The caveat is the wood is heavy which means wet and hard to light. I will do that later.
Right now I am just trying to adjust to the pain, I don’t do pain killers.
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