Sweat equity

So, yeasterday morning I drove the four hours from the Aerie to the Bolt Hole in my lovely air conditioned truck. When I arrived I found that Mark had split and stacked one hell of a lot of firewood. There were two stacks approximately six feet hist and 24 feet long each containing split cherry, maple and beech. And that was just from the trees he cut down.

i changed into my work clothes and fired up the ATV to haul out some of the blocked up trunks I had cut. After three hours of hard labor, I was soaked. I had drunk two quarts of water and had probably sweated out that and more. I had made a sizable stack of blocks for myself but had lots more to block up and haul out. I called it a day knowing I would have to work a full 8 hours on Wednesday to get the rest out of the woods and up to the splitting area.

Wednesday morning dawned clear as could be and promised to be a scortcher. And it kept its promise. The forecast was for around 90 degrees and while it never got that hot (I don't think it broke 85) it was hot enough when your doing the kind of physical labor I was doing. All day long I was hoisting blocks of maple and beech that probably weighed in at around 50-75 pounds onto the back of the ATV and hauling them out of the woods. When I wasn't lifting, I was cutting. I had dropped two trunks that I hadn't gotten cut when Mark and I Were working together about two weeks ago and they had to be blocked up before I hauled them out. Again, I worked at a reasonable pace trying to take a 10 minute break every hour and drank lots of fluids. I even took a "siesta" to go and check the game cameras we have in the woods. i worked from 8 in the morning untiil 5:30 in the afternoon to finish the bulk of the job. All that's left are some limbs that are less than five inches in diameter and therefore need not be split. They are stacked tee-pee style against the trunks of trees to await another day.

Tomorrow I'll get the hydraulic splitter out and reduce the size of my blocks into burnable faggots of wood. As it promises to be another hot day, I will comfort myself with lots of water and the thought that when this wood goes into the wood burning stove it might be as low as -10 degrees outside.

Oh, BTW, Terry called this evening to say the stone and block for the retaining wall at the Aerie will be delivered tomorrow. And each one of those blocks weighs in at 85 pounds.