The life of the lumberjack.

Well, for those of you townies who read this, I thought I'd give you a little glimpse into life in the country, where you stand shoulder to shoulder with nature. The sky is your ceiling, the earth is your bed. Your very existence hangs on the rhythm of the seasons. Life is simple. (As are some of the people...)
So here's a little something about collecting firewood.

First you get your employer to cut down a bunch of trees on your property (well, their property, strictly speaking). And the trees were cut down because they needed to be (falling over, rotting through, that sort of thing!). Then you have a whole load of wood, but because our fireplace isn't the size of a large tree, you need to cut the wood down. That's where your visitors come in:
Now, I'd obviously have put shots of myself here, but it's tricky to take photos of yourself splitting wood, not to mention slightly dangerous... So here's a very obliging relative :) This is a demonstration of the classic 'I've got the wood stuck on the axe (or as it's more correctly known, the maul)' pose. This can be quite common, depending on the type of wood you're splitting. I have to confess, I enjoy demonstrating splitting with some easy-to-split wood (like birch) and then placing a different type of wood ready for visitors to have a crack at :) (Sorry Mark!)

This next photo shows the more satisfying result of striking wood with maul, that is, a clean split.
As you can see, one bit of wood is flying off the the right (this is where feet can get hurt!) and another is flying off to the left. For bonus points on this split, you'll see the bark has also come off the wood, and is flying in another direction (it's the black shape that's hiding the blade of the axe/maul).
This is a truly satisfying activity for all. Particularly in winter, as you can then go inside and enjoy the nice wood fire, though obviously not with the wood you've just split - it needs thorough seasoning. And no, I don't mean a pinch of cinnamon.

Watch out for the installment on 'chainsawing'. It'll have to wait until we have more visitors though...