Fun fact, back in my theatre days, I was a stage manager for The Great Canadian Lumberjack show for the Rocky Mountaineer Rail Tours. We put on a dinner theatre for guests that were passing through town on the train. The Lumberjack show, though somewhat theatrical in the script, was truly showcasing some great skills. The performers, who each were actually lumberjacks not just actors pretending, showcased a lot of skills each night for the visitors. They would chainsaw carve, double buck (often with a guest from the audience), underhand chop, springboard chop, axe throw and log roll. I loved working the show. It was high energy and impossible for the crowd to not get excited with all that way taking place.

That was years ago, and yet I still like to reminisce. If you ever want to see the show, it no longer plays as part of the Rocky Mountaineer, but if you make your way up to Grouse Mountain in Vancouver, you will be able to catch the show during the summer months at the top of the gondola. it is definitely worth it if you are in the area! The season officially started last Saturday, and there are 3 shows a day. You can check out information on the website. One more fun-fact, a lot of these guys are world champions in Lumberjack sports, so you are guaranteed to see some amazing skills.

So why am I telling you all about this? Because we recently went out into the woods to help our friends get some wood. These are the wonderful friends who help stock us up with wood for the winter season so that we can have roasty-toasty fires on those chilly winter days. We usually go out with them to help them get their wood as well. They generally need a lot more than us as they use it as their winter heat source. Plus, it is a really fun day in the woods.

We found a lovely, tall, large, dead-standing beauty next to a cute little pond. After cutting it down, we managed to fill both trucks, and still had some that our friends will go back for before someone else finds it. Once back at their place, they have a nice powered wood splitter, so we hung out and helped get everything split and stacked. As we were doing so, we realized that we still have a stack of wood tarped by the shed that will need splitting and stacking. We only went through about half of what we cut last year.

So, over the next few days, we uncovered and started chopping the rounds that we had stored. Once chopped, we started stacking it on our stand (which really doesn’t hold much), and around the stand, to be tarped for the winter use. We wanted to get an idea of how much we have so that we know how much we might need to get for this winter. We will need a bit more to make sure that we have enough for the winter. Plus, my dad helped us get this wood last summer, so he will likely be grabbing some of it for camping this summer.

We will also be needing to grab a new chop block this year as ours has finally split into 2 pieces. We are going to aim to get one slightly taller as we find cutting kindling is tough on the back at this height.

For the summer, we are going to get rid of our broken chop block and prepare the area to be mowed, making it easier to manage that area. In the fall, we will likely prep an area for the new chop block to go. We will want to make sure everything is level. Eventually, when we build a proper new shed, we will create an area that will be cemented for our chop block to go, for easier cleanup.

It was nice to get this all chopped before it gets too hot. Though, I did give up on a few rounds because they were just about impossible to split. I did manage to beat one into submission, but it took over 28 hits with the maul, and eventually I used the maul, which was stuck in the wood, as a wedge and sledgehammered it until the wood finally split. For every centimeter that the maul got pounded into the wood, it would pop and fibres would slowly release. I can’t believe how tightly the fibres were woven in this piece of wood.

I grabbed the next one and after 5 hits, realized it was going to do the same thing and decided that those last 2 logs were going to be taken camping and burned whole. My palms are genuinely bruised from the one round I did manage to split, and that was with gloves on.

We will definitely need a bit more wood for the winter. What we have would get us through if we were careful about when we burned and how long we had the fire going. But we prefer to have enough that we won’t run out and have some leftover for the following years camping season.