Getting in the winter's wood supply

Ouch... ooh... grunt... groan... umphh!  These (among others) were the sounds our family made during the past weekend when the annual job of bringing in our winter's wood supply began.  Now in the dead of winter when the wood fire is doing an awesome job of keeping the house warm, it is simply marvelous knowing we have adequate wood supply to keep us through the winter.  But, at the time when the wood must be brought in, and the days are still sunny, warm, and lovely... it is hard to imagine the dead of winter when the wood supply is greatly appreciated.  When you're sweaty, hot, exhausted, cut-up, bruised up, and a stinky, sticky, dirty mess.... it is really hard to appreciate!

But, regardless of how difficult the job is, it remains that it must be done, and so this past weekend, we hit it hard, and accomplished our goal.  Now, it feels wonderful to know that it is in, but this past Saturday and Sunday, I think all of us were tempted to reconsider an alternative heat! LOL!

Fortunately this year we were able to make use of this sweet baby - our own log splitter! We found a great deal on this log splitter, which saved my husband and son a huge amount of work splitting all the wood we would need.  This made our wood process go so much more quickly and efficiently this year!

Our son was glad to be at the side of the log splitter, instead of having to split it all by hand!

Splitting the wood makes the fires burn much more efficiently and evenly, and also the wood stacks better.

We had rows and rows of wood that we had stacked around our property close to where the trees were felled, de-limbed, and cut.  We simply moved the log splitter around to each row of wood waiting to be split.

We took our two trucks, plus our old pickup-bed trailer (which we use for wood/trash) to fill up with the wood we split.

Annie wanted to be with us as we split wood.  However, she spent more time watching the chipmunks who constantly teased her instead.  Not much help she was!

And this is a picture of our wood stacked in the basement, nice, tight, and snug - all ready for winter!

It was a long two days worth of work, and our bodies all certainly bore the marks of our efforts - scratches, bruises, and aching bones and joints!  Yet, it was a great feeling of accomplishment to have it done, and to know that come what may this winter, we will be warm!