Don't axe what I did today.

It has been a brisk few days.


Maybe it would help if I put in some numbers to make it clear. When we got back from Brittany it was to a house with quite a lot of wood but not a lot of firewood.



We didn't really get into our stride till September when we cut about 5 tons of wood. Not bad going you might think. This month we processed another 5 tons, only it wasn't in the month it was since Thursday morning.



What made it even more spectacular was that one tone of that was proper hard oak. Normal wood, post chain saw gets slivvered with little fire fighters hand axes from the 50's and very good they are too.


Oak though needs full hit blows with a felling axe, ours of course are veterans of the blitz in 1940 - far better than anything you can get today!



I split 1/2 ton of oak this morning, on my own. It was seriously hard work, one particularly stubborn bit took about 5 minutes.



In all today we probably processed about 2 tons with about 1/2 ton left outside to move and stack in the morning.

It's brilliant though, we have enough wood  cut to see us through the winter, though we won't stop now just in case. Unlike petrol wood stacked now and used next year will be even better!

We would use about 2 tanks of heating oil in a normal winter, plus run a dehumidifyer and use the tumble drier. The oil alone would cost us about 2000 pounds.

!0 tons of wood, that's 200 pounds, plus about 4 gallons (thats about 20 litres)  of petrol 2 gallons of chain oil and some two stroke. Even a Tory could make those sums add up.

Not factored in is our time but of course I am now, after a really nasty time this year, feeling fit, which improves my confidence and makes me feel a lot more healthy.   




So don't axe me what I did today though I am probably going to be saw in the morning.


R