One aspect of living on Whidbey Island is dealing with wood.
You have to deal with it after storms, when trees fall onto power lines or (which has happened twice) across our drive way. You deal with it (as I did) when trees are hovering over your house, and you know they will fall onto it during the next storm.
And, for most of us, you deal with it in terms of using it for heat.
And that means most of us have a chain saw, and use it. In addition, I am a 1/3 owner (with my buddy Gordon and someone he knows) of a powerful log splitter.
Vicky and I had several large trees taken down while we were away on our road trip. Some were taken down because they had already fallen down or were about to. Vicky's son-in-law Luc stacked a bunch of them close to our house. We had a total of about 6 large trees to deal with, plus a number of large rounds that I had collected over the past couple of years that were stacked near the shed, plus a large stack of wood that Vicky had brought with her.
Our goal was to get everything cut, split, and stacked. A big project. But one that would provide us with enough wood for 3-4 years.
And the cost savings would be enormous. Using propane for heat is like burning five dollar bills for heat. Wood is a LOT cheaper.
This was an everyday project for two weeks. The only break was one day to hike to Mt. Rainier, and another day to do the Tour de Peaks bike ride with Jules.
In other words, to relax from backbreaking work we hiked and biked.
The hike was stunning, and the bike ride was, the three of us agreed, our favorite one of the year.
It started off at the foot of Mt. Si. The route took us through some beautiful places. Our favorite part of the ride was from Fall City to Carnation. It was so terrific that Jules did that part of the route twice, and still beat us back to the finish line. We rode 52 miles.
Got up the next morning, and started in on our wood project again.
I have a Husqvarna (known as a Husky) chain saw. One of the best. When I cut wood I dress like I am going into combat with aliens. I wear goggles and a helmet with a face guard. I also wear Kevlar chaps--in case the chain saw slips and hits my leg it will immediately bind up and not hurt me. I also have a rule that I only use one tank of gas per day, so that when I use the saw I am always fresh and concentrating on what I am doing. Chain saws can be nasty, and one needs to have a great deal of respect for them.
Here is the pile of trees that Luc pulled out from our woods and stacked next to our house, with some of them that we cut shortly after we returned from our road trip:
We set up the splitter in our lower shed, and trailered the cut rounds down to it. They were VERY heavy. About 35 trips.
We bought a steel bar to be able to move a couple of these trees--they were so huge. I would wedge the bar under the log, and raise it, and Vicky would wedge a piece of wood under it to lift it a few inches so we could cut it. A chain saw goes dull immediately upon hitting the dirt, so logs can't be laying on the ground when cut.
This is what the garage looked like when we began the project:
Some of the rounds were so large that I couldn't lift them into the wagon. So we tried a couple of Forrest Gump solutions.
The first was that we tried rolling them into the wagon. This photo gives a good idea of how large some of the rounds were. And since the trees were cut recently, they still retained a lot of their original moisture, and so were heavier for that reason.
While clever, this plan wasn't real great because we still had to remove the heavy rounds from the wagon when we used the splitter.
The next solution was to just cut them into smaller pieces. That worked better to protect our backs.
Here is what it looks like now. What a difference. What a lot of work.
In addition to these trees, we had cut up several trees from the front of our house that had fallen down. They were stacked next to the driveway, as can be seen in this photo of one of my bikes that I was selling on Craigslist (we don't have a better picture of the wood stack).
Sold the bike, by the way. Here's Vicky splitting, and then photos of us moving this wood to the front porch:
We also had a very large pile of rounds next to the shed. I had been building that pile for about three years.
Photo of Vicky using the splitter. She worked the controls while I moved the wood. We are a good team. We probably split a few thousand pieces.
The final part of the project was dealing with a huge wood pile that had been sitting for a year under a tarp. We didn't have time to move it last year. Since this wood is seasoned, we moved it onto the porch, onto the breezeway, and onto the back deck. It's the wood we'll use this winter.
Vicky loaded a wheelbarrow and also the wagon.
Then I drove it around to the breezeway.
Where we unloaded it:
The last load:
We are now ready for this winter, and winters for the next two to three years.
Wood for the future. Two weeks of hard work. Very rewarding.
We measured our stacks. We cut and split 4 1/2 cords, and stacked an additional 1.9 cords. We found on-line that, depending on a number of factors, a cord of wood can weigh from 1-2 tons. The wood we cut and split we lifted three times (once to the wagon, once from the wagon to the splitter, and once from the splitter to the stack). The 1.9 cords we stacked we lifted twice (once into the wagon and then again to carry onto the porch).
This gives us, for the two weeks, that we lifted somewhere between 16 tons (and what do you get?) and 32 tons of wood.
Later that night we went back to admire our accomplishments, and found snakes all over the place where the wood pile had been. I guess we removed their home. They were all slithering around, like they couldn't comprehend what had happened. We felt so bad.
