Winter was at its final leg and Duane decided to prepare for the next (or rather 5 winters) judging by my enthusiasm at burning wood rather than switching on the money zapping heat pump. There were some trees out at his friends farm that felled in the Sept quake and just sat there quietly in the corner till it could not be ignored any longer. It was Poplars and burns pretty well, so off we went to 'help' his friend clear the trees and stock our shed.
It was definitely an interesting experience and a highly ordered one at that. First off, ear muffs and get the chainsaw cracking! Something about holding a chainsaw that makes you feel empowered. The giant of a saw that Duane had just went through those trunks like a hot knife through butter. It was pretty addictive and makes you want to through an entire forest madly sawing everything in sight, or maybe that is just a thought of a depraved phd student :P
Right, so once the cross sections of the trunks have been prepared, the more technical aspect of woodcutting comes into play. The idea here is to strike the cylindrical cross sections with a huge as axe and spit it to nice bite sizes that fit into the log burner. It looked impossible to me at the beginning but you will soon get the hang of it until you hit one or two that are as dense as gold and your axe gets stuck. Then you call Duane and switch to chuck the wood into the trailer duty!
Pretty eventful and insightful outing, again another Kiwi experience to remember and probably relive down the road.
