Wood, wood and more wood!

The woodshed

We need wood, some for use in the log burner in the downstairs family room...
And we have a Marshall furnace that heats our water, on average we light it twice a week, more if we have extra smelly people staying!
In order for the above to be of any use they need to be fed, their diet is simple, they need wood. And we have an abundance of that around the place, you will have seen in previous blog entries that we have been cutting down some pines. Although it's probably not the best firewood, it's free and it does the job. It's been such a help having Stuart(moved on now to discover more of NZ) and Bastian who have pretty much cut enough firewood to get us through the winter.

This picture is of the woodshed with the remains of last years wood before the boys tidied then added to it.

The wood on the right was tidied and restacked, the big lumps of wood still need to be cut at this stage, they were a bit tough for the axemen! The stock feed bags are full of pine cones which make great firelighters.
This Saturday the log splitter was dragged out fo the barn on the tractor and was put into action. It wasn't doing much to start with, it had no pressure at all, so Joe had a fiddle, he's a great fiddler! And it worked..................
It sliced through those big lumps of wood like butter..................

And this is how the woodshed looked Saturday afternoon!
But wait! There's more! Now what? I hear you ask! I shall tell you............

Sometime back in the winter, a branch fell off one of the big pines in the far paddock, the branch is on the left, "I can see that! I'm not blind!" Yeees I know that, but I just wanted to distract you from the slave labour employed gathering pine cones, it actually cost me four pizzas and 2 boxes of beer, so who's the slave I'm wondering? Anyway the branch fell, I'm not sure of it made a noise when it fell, no-one was here to hear it! Sigh! It's Monday, it's raining and I'm avoiding the housework.. I promise, no more dithering.. it fell on a fence, one of the new fences, well not that new but newish....and it's been sat there ever since.
Until Saturday that is, until LumberJoe(he's not called Jack) went with his trusty chainsaw and cut it up............
Now it needs to be loaded on the trailer and brought to the woodshed....another job for the log splitter......BASTIAN!!!!! I say, yoo hoo....where ya hidin".............?

PS It's at this point I confess that before I was about to put on the last few photos I realised I had left the camera outside...in the rain......overnight................ poop! I am pleased to report however that it seems ok but I had a couple of bottom tweaking moments I can tell ya!

A couple more photos.... the ever present dawgs, well two of 'em, Max and Clyde. In her defence Bonnie had probably had a hard day barking at nothing whatsoever and it's a real effort to get off that sofa...the poor luv!

The view of the house from the far paddock