Serious Firewood....

Each year we have a couple Saturdays in the fall dedicated to processing firewood for the coming year.  I spend quite a bit of time, ahead of time, getting logs and trees identified, hauled out of the woods or someway or another prepared for these two days...so we can make the most of the volunteers who come to help with the processing.  This year we had quite a bit of wood to process, for several reasons.  First, we sell and use quite a bit of firewood here at the camp...so, if the trees and logs do not present themselves in one way or another, then we have to go out and find appropriate trees or logs.  This year however, we had a lot of wood to work with, provided in a couple different ways.  Last winter we harvested some trees here on the grounds (see the separate story on this by looking at my Jan, 2010 blog entry).  As a result of this harvest, we had a lot of "tops" of trees to deal with, along with other trees that were damaged in the logging process.  In addition, we also had quite a few trees damaged by storms this past spring and summer, so as a result...a fair amount of wood was naturally provided for firewood. 

Nevertheless, on these two work days, the primary object of the day is to process firewood.  Whether cutting or splitting or hauling or whatever.   This year...splitting was the main thing, due to a fair amount of cutting that had been done ahead of time by my loyal volunteers, Walter Pettifor and Johnny Coontz.  The volunteers that showed up on the Oct 30 work day did a great job...and on the Nov 6 work day...well, a small army showed up.  Besides a hand full of the regular volunteers, we also had a group of 26 SAU guys come out and have a retreat on the Friday night before the work day, and then they all pitched in and helped create a small mountain of split firewood in the 4 hours they all spent working together.  Plus, several of our local firefighters and our local police chief all came out the same day too.  Needless to say, it was a great day!