“People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results.”
Albert Einstein
Another day another load of wood to do.
The chainsaw needed maintenance, the chain was loose, it needed gas and chain oil and it needed sharpening. I gathered all the items, bar tool, a red sharpie, and files for sharpening.
It was too cold in the workshop to do the deed, so I did it in front of the woodstove. Ya, I know a machine with gas in front of a fire. It all went well. The chain was sharpened to the best of my ability. I really suck at that, but it gets me through at least one log cutting session.
I filled the saw with mixed gas and filled the chain oil reservoir with winter oil.
Time to get dressed and head out to the woodpile. The logs were too tightly packed, so I did the log I was saving for emergencies. It was suspended three feet above the ground and free of other logs. I cut that into blocks it took about three minutes to do twenty feet of log. I accomplished more than the entire half-hour out there.
My right hand was starting to freeze, my left hand was holding the heated grip. If you haven’t had a hand freeze before it feels like someone smashed your hand with a hammer. If I stayed out longer there was a chance I could actually freeze it. It might mean losing the hand if I was not careful. That for me is a bad condition no way to prepare wood for the fire.
So I had to go inside and warm up before the next stage of my daily operation. Loading the wheelbarrow with wood and transporting it to the splitter.
I cut enough for a few days. I wanted to bring it all inside but I need to pick up the next load of online groceries from Amazon. So the van needed to come out. Piling a few days of logs in front of the doors wouldn’t work. Some have already arrived at the post office. Some will arrive tomorrow, and something new I ordered, some emergency food from Costco, dehydrated meals.
I am looking forward to trying them. The only bad thing, they are to arrive Monday, look at the forecast. The cold gets serious then. I am not sure the van will even start, It doesn’t like any below -18 and right now Gracie needs gas poured down her throat to start at all.
The weather forecast says I will wake up to snow. So the only thing I can do is stack the wood I cut today. That adds to the workload but makes it easier to find in the snow.
I laughed a bit when the forecast says the cold snap will only stay till Sunday. I know we are about to head into a prolonged cold snap with temps dropping below -40. For the entire month it will be cold. But a lot warmer than the -52 we experienced last year. Yes I kept cutting wood and chopping it by hand then. I didn’t feel the pain in my joints I have now, the knees back and neck pain were there, but not the shortness of breath.
I may have no choice but to chop by hand anyways it may be too cold to run the splitter, or the needed generator. Time to get dressed and head out for stage two, collect and stack wood. Stage three: run the gen and split the wood. Stage four bring it in collect snow for melting and collapse.
Btw hypocritical treehugger, all my wood is beetle-killed pine. If you don’t like that stop idling your SUV in Timmy’s drive-through. Get out and walk to the counter. Think about killing fewer cows. Maybe then the climate would straighten out, but I doubt it.
I know I have used this song before but the lyrics fit.
You must be logged in to post a comment.