We have spent the last three days using a wood splitter on all of the rounds of wood left from the felling.  Tom came home with the splitter Friday afternoon, his father joined us, and we got started with the pine in our front yard.  Here is the set up we had.

We then split most of the birch by the road.  At that point we were exhausted.  For dinner, Tom and I headed to Katt’s Westside Stories.  I was hoping for their Reuben sandwich, but they didn’t have any corned beef so we had Wrangler burgers, and they were amazing.  The fries were great as well.  It was so nice just to sit down and not have to cook.  Here’s the view of part of the bar.

Saturday I got up early to do the chores so we could start splitting by 10:00.  We had taken in some chickens from a friend whose coop was under attack by a predator.  There is one rooster, Mr. Pink.  He is trying to find his way among three of our roosters.  Even the 2 turkey hens and one peacock are harassing him.  But he is just keeping his distance and doing OK.

Saturday we split the spruce rounds from between the house and the trailer.  I was the one positioning the rounds on the splitter, Tom’s dad was operating the switch, and Tom was taking the wood away with the tractor.  He was also helping move the rounds to the splitter.  I was exhausted Saturday, falling asleep at 7:00.

Today I got up early again (5:30) to do the chores.  Here is the sun coming up over our operation.

I enjoyed seeing the cows look so relaxed in the morning sun.

Here is the wood pile near the barn in the morning.

Tom and his father got started at 8:00, but I was still finishing the chores.  I joined them at 9:00.  We whooped up on the remaining spruce by the trailer and barn.  I was surprised to see quite a few ticks on the spruce we were cutting.  I didn’t know we had ticks on our property.

For some reason the dogs really enjoyed us splitting wood.  Not sure why, but they were both every active and happy.

And at the end of the day we had these two piles near the barn,

and this pile by the vintage trailer out front.

We were done today before 2:00.  We had lunch on the back porch yesterday (smoked pork chops) and today (grilled burgers).  That helped with the fatigue, and I think we were all good at staying hydrated.  Plus we kept the shade shelter over us which really kept things cooler.  Overall a very successful operation and happy to be done with it!