The Woodpile

As long as I can remember I have been around a woodpile.  My father has been in the Tree Removal business since the early 70's.  I can't tell you how many trees he has cut but it has to be in the ten's of thousands.  Maybe that's a little light.   I can remember my father coming home almost every night with a load of wood and I would help him unload it.  If you couldn't find my dad, you could find him outside at the woodpile.  He would use his maul and sometimes even a sledge and wedge.  He would split, stack and repeat. I would spend time back there with him climbing on the piles. The best part was that I could be with my dad.  It's funny how kids want to be like their fathers. Well, I have tried my best to be like him.  Over the years I have become more involved in the tree business. I mainly go just to hang out with him.  I now fill up my pickup truck and drop it off at the woodpile.  It's a lot of work, but there is such a peacefulness of being there and seeing something through til the end.
I basically do this year round.  I get truck load after truck load, throw it in a pile and then start splitting.  You don't realize how many times you can touch a piece of wood. 5 times or more.  It's crazy to think but you load it on the truck, you unload it, you pick it up and put it on the splitter, you throw it in a pile, you stack it and then load it again. Well, that's more than 5.

I use a Dirty Hand Tools 27 Ton Wood Splitter.  I can say that this machine is way better than a maul. I have split my fair share of wood by hand.  It's a great workout and I love to do it, but the strain on the body is sometimes overbearing with age. It was quite comical when my father saw me bring home this wood splitter.  He said "What are you doing?  I used to split 50 loads a year by hand."  I said, "Ya that's great and all but this thing is 3 times faster than me and it doesn't get tired." Haha!  I still swing a maul every once in a while but not often.  The picture above is what I have accomplished this year so far. The other two pictures are just of what I started with at the beginning of year and a random picture of a pile that was split before being stacked.