Now you see 'em, now you don't

Back in late 2021, when the landscape contractor and his crew took down the dead and dying birches in the north forty, I asked them to cut the trunks and large branches into thirty-three centimeter lengths so I could use them as firewood. They did, and stacked them under the tall Himalayan cedar. I thought I'd be able to split them last year, but I couldn't. There they've sat since then. Until now.

Before, from up on the deck. I had already moved about ten logs to help stabilize the bigger log pile. Taken with the Canon 6D.

The crew spent a couple of hours on Wednesday afternoon manually splitting the trunks into pieces that I can fit into the wood stove. They also moved them over to the log pile under the deck. So cool. I burned a bunch of the wood yesterday and it burns well.

After, at ground level. I'm still working on cutting up the smaller branches for kindling. Taken with the Pixel 6.

I wonder if my failure to split the logs myself was partly because they needed to dry out a little more. Could be, but most likely it was because I'm not strong enough and my axe isn't hefty enough. I'm a lumberjack no more. I can still split the already split logs into smaller pieces, as long as there are no knots to cut through.