Logging!

Experience is an impressive teacher.  One of the things we’ve learned living here is that it can get a teeny tiny bit cold in the winter.  My Southern California born off spring and I have all learned the value of our wood burning stove, how to use it effectively, keeping the house warm and the smoke alarm from going off!  Experience has also taught us not to put off this chore, because you do not want to be looking for a big old pile of wood when it is already cold, which was why we were so very happy to have made contact with Loggin’ Larrin and procured a whole load of neighbor envy inducing logs.The set up he has is compact and complicated all at the same time, and I found myself disappointed to not have a small boy here to watch this truck offload the wood, as small boys do seem to love this sort of stuff….larger boys just want to run the hydraulics.Off came our load of logs, making us happy to have the wood, but knowing we had a bit of work ahead of us, before any of it would be the size to fit into our stove.  My Loving Spouse put his chain saw into action and we heard comments like, “The new bar on my chain saw cuts those logs like a knife through warm butter.”  This step was going well…We then had a few small rounds of wood that I could pick up and Number Two Son could split.  However, we mostly had big rounds I cannot lift.  They are also too ‘wet’ to split making the maul just bounce off of them.  We will have a lot of these big rounds, so we needed more power, or as one of our neighbors says, “Let’s do this hydraulically!”

So entered two items that easily turn logs into firewood…a log splitter than runs off the hydraulics on Blue on loan to us from Our Friend the Farmer and….

Number Four Son that runs off a huge heart.Number Four blesses us with the happiness to help us out and the strength to lift the large rounds of wood.  We made a good team and in one hour got lots done…I like hydraulics.  We determined that the most practical use of Number Four’s time and strength would be to split all the big rounds in to quarters, which are small enough for me to handle.Number Four had set aside an hour to help, and was determined to work for a complete hour, and let me tell you, when he is determined it is best to stand aside and let him go, because he is going to do what he sets out to do.  We were a great team and split quite an impressive number of wheel barrows full of firewood.Although we still have a lot of logs to cut, split, stack…we are very happy campers, and if you want to come and play lumber jack, we are more than happy to share.