Wood Cutting

This weekend we made our first wood cutting trip of the season.  We burn a whole lot of wood at our house from late fall to late spring.....therefore, we must start preparations early.  We like to make sure that we are well stocked ourselves, and because we enjoy being out in the woods in the fall, we also cut wood for some of our dearest older friends. 

My husband is cutting rounds to be loaded in the truck.

Our kids are finally reaching the age where they are becoming a big help to us in the loading process.  And the beauty of the whole thing is that they really enjoy it!  They are both so stinkin' competitive that they fight over who gets to use the sledge hammer and wedge to try to split the log in the least amount of hits.

Our girl thinks she's a lumberjack.  If you tell her she's not strong enough to do something, she sees it as a challenge to prove you wrong.

Here's our son splitting logs for the fun of it.  He's trying to set a new world record.

My job is to obsessive-compulsively fill every available square millimeter of space in the back of the truck with wood.  I load each piece meticulously and restack as I find pieces better suited for the space.  It's a bit like doing a jig saw puzzle, and trying to make every piece interlock with the next one.  I try to push the envelope by stacking the wood as tall as possible without the wood falling off of the stack while we're driving down the highway.  We repeatedly lost the same two pieces of wood on this trip, and that means one of two things:

A.  I failed.

B. My husband drove off- road for 20 miles over huge potholes, rocks, and tiny little two track lanes.  He went flying down wash board roads and over cattle guards at 30 miles an hour, and occasionally jammed on the brakes to maneuver hair- pin turns.

I'll let you decide who's to blame.  I imagine the whole situation is a bit like the scene from "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" where the sled, covered with a gigantic bag of toys, goes careening out of control down the hill with the loot swaying dangerously from side to side without dropping anything. If you see a big silver truck with dust billowing behind it, you should probably stay back a good distance for your safety.

Oh....I know what you're thinking.....we should use tie down straps.  Naw.  Tie down straps are for people who aren't experts in the field of stacking fire wood.  It's for those novice wood cutters.  We are all professionals here, people.

Sometimes when the saw is running and I have nothing to do, I take pictures of moss growing on wood.  It looks peaceful...like something hanging in a spa...where massages happen... and then I think of hot rock massages...and pedicures...and I'm taken back to a tranquil place in my mind...until I get saw dust in my eye and I'm ripped back into reality. 

Are you getting the same vibe from this picture?  I thought so.