A first felling before the chance of snow

The weather has turned colder again here over the last day or so (it was back to breaking ice on the geese's water bowl and pool this morning), and the forecast for the coming weekend has changed from clear skies to the possibility of snow. That was enough to propel me into action in the form of wood cutting today as over the last few weeks our wood pile has started to look decidedly sad.

So after breakfast I left Helen in the office (adorned in her new office attire - a slanket - sent by her friends last week) and went out into a very chilly morning, wearing a coat over my hoody for the second time this year. It was still only hovering around freezing outside - just was a touch warmer than when Helen was outside on the turbo trainer first thing.

I took a refuelled chainsaw along the drive in search of dead trees. I'd seen a couple a while back that I'd earmarked for felling for this year's burning should we run low, and today was the day they were coming down.

Now, I'd fully planned to get some training on chainsaw use before this moment arrived, but events had conspired against us (as they often seem to have done since arriving here), and the original plan to enrol on a course back in the UK to coincide with a return trip for Christmas just didn't happen - in the time between arriving here and Christmas we ended up not only with a pair of geese but a puppy as well, which ruled out a trip back to England.

So I found myself having now spent several hours using the chainsaw to cut logs to size with the aid of a saw horse, but not yet having felled anything. I've read two books on log fires, both of which touch on the art and inherent dangers of felling trees, and another book on coppice management that also covers felling, so I had plenty of theory behind me, but zero practice. It was thus with considerable caution that I clambered up the bank from the driveway into the wood armed with chainsaw, axe and walkie talkie, to search for my first victim.

The first and second candidates I had spotted proved to be too close to a power line to be sensible contenders for my first felling, so I climbed a bit higher and found a long-dead chestnut (three trunks worth) that was out of range of the power cable.

The three chestnut trunks in the middle of the photo were my target.

After surveying the tree, obstacles and possible problems, and deciding on my escape route, I took down the first of the smaller two trunks without any problem. I cut them into small logs ready for splitting and let gravity help with rolling them down the bank to the drive. Gravity proved to be a little over enthusiastic in this task though, and a couple of them continued on over the drive - almost without touching it - rolling off deep into the woods below. Lesson number one: logs love rolling down hills - much better to throw long trunks and cut them shorter later.

The third and much taller trunk was less easy. The wood around it was quite dense, so I could tell that this one wasn't going to fall far before tangling into one of its neighbours - no matter which way I dropped it, it was going to tangle with something, so I cut the wedge on the best place possible to drop it downhill towards the drive and hoped the weight of it would stop the branches high up catching the tree next to it... It didn't. I cut the felling cut into the back it and the trunk simply hopped off and stood there right next to the stump I had cut it from, upper branches hanging on for dear life to its old friend next door.

There was nothing else for it but to repeat the process - but now it was trickier: I needed to predict how this larger trunk was going to throw its weight around after I cut it a second time now that it was tangled. I figured it was either going to continue its fall or come right back the opposite way. It did the latter, but I made sure I was at the side of it when I made the cut, and it fell harmlessly to the ground - not without a rush of adrenaline though, quite serious work this tree felling and you don't need that explaining after you've had a go at it once.

Felled!

After getting all the felled and chopped logs down to the drive and back to the house it was time to put the splitting axe to work, and by lunch time the wood pile was looking less sorry for itself. My latest additions to the wood pile included some beautifully seasoned chestnut wood - my moisture meter had the logs at a 15% reading, which is better than anything we've been burning so far, so I'm expecting some toasty fires in the not too distant future.

Sad wood pile.

Happy wood pile!

After lunch it was back to splitting - green wood this time in an effort to tidy up around wood pile number two and to add to next year's fire wood.

Helen emerged from the house at around 3pm to do a bit of outdoor work herself, so while she set to work on the lower terraces I started logging the remaining oak that was down there - and a nice pile of wood it made too.

As the sun dipped down behind the hills opposite at around 4.30pm, we called it a day - we were determined to get a hot fire going this evening, having left it too late to get it toasty last night. So we took Reggie out for a walk along the San Lorenzo track so that he could bark and growl at passing cars(!) then came home to put the geese to bed and light what will hopefully be a toasty fire!