This is the time of year in Vermont when folks (like me) with wood stoves are out of dry cord wood.  Yet, on many cool damp spring days, a wood fire is welcome.  So we scavenge around looking for orphan chunks emerging from the melting snow and burn just about anything we can get our hands on.  And we vow to put more wood away for next winter -- and start now.

I burn wood to save oil, to enjoy the ambiance of wood fires, and as a way to get some good strength workouts.  With thirty acres of forest, it’s not a question of buying already-cut wood -- although I must admit I covet some of the big woodpiles I see -- knowing that one or two truckloads delivered it.  But my addiction to cutting and splitting wood began long before we moved back to Vermont.

In the mid-80’s, I was doing a lot of ski racing. I got stoked for cutting my own firewood when I read that Gunde Svan, at the time a champion Swedish Olympic XC skier, trained with his buddies in the off-season by cutting and splitting wood.  Well, I don’t think emulating him helped get me faster on skis but still, years later, I work on firewood in our woods as part of my exercise routine.  Horsing chunks around and swinging a maul to split them, like I did today, is a great full body workout.

We have a lot of gnarly soft maples and often, on winter walks with the dog, I’ll eye trees for deformities and possible harvesting.  I drop a bunch of trees each winter to let them dry a bit and to get them down before birds start nesting.  This time of year, it’s time to get serious about getting wood read so it will dry all summer (In a perfect life, I’d be working two years ahead.)

The trails are way too muddy for the tractor -- and will be for a month or more -- so I lug the chain saw and all the accoutrements out a quarter mile or more and start cutting up the downed trees into 16” lengths.  Then I bring out the maul for some splitting.  The woods resound with unkind words as I work over some of the stubborn chunks.  There’s a certain satisfaction to finishing off one of the tough cases -- and there will be a certain satisfaction next winter when I load each of those babies into the wood stove.  I’ve told more than one, “Take that, you SOB,”  as I load it into the firebox.  Childish yes, but satisfying.

We’ve all heard Thoreau’s quote, “firewood warms you twice” -- once when you split it and once when you burn it.  Sorry Henry, it’s more than six or eight times.  Let me count the ways:
1. Starting the saw and cutting down the tree, then cutting it into stove-size lengths.
2. Lifting the chunk on to a splitting stump and swinging the maul, usually more than once. (I know, a power wood splitter would make it go fast but “what would Gunde do?)
3. Stacking the wood out in the woods for the summer.
4. Lifting the chunks of wood into the bucket of the tractor.
4. Offloading the wood and stacking it.
6 Moving armloads of stacked wood into the house.
7. Burning the wood.

So, no need for a gym membership for me.  My Nautilus workout is bending and moving heavy chunks, whacking away at them with a heavy maul, and lifting them up to stack them in the woods.  Of course, this fall, I’ll get another workout by loading them in the tractor bucket, and then restacking them by the house.  But by then, the wood is drier and much lighter so it’s easier on the back and legs.

When we bought our house here nine years ago, I didn’t appreciate the appropriateness of our address.  We live on Wood Road.

If you enjoyed this article, then please subscribe to our RSS feed or via email to receive all the updates

  Bookmark this on Delicious