They say wood warms you twice—once when you cut it then when you burn it. Or something like that. Maybe chopping wood warms you twice. Well, anyway, they’re crazy. Here’s how many times wood warms me…
1. chop tree down—chopping with big sharp ax is the best and most fun way (and healthiest—those bone-blows are good fer ya) to take down a tree under 12″, takes a half hour max, but if you must be hasty then use bowsaw, or if you have a house that’s falling down in a dozen other ways and you’ve no time to spare anywhere then just chainsaw the sucker — it’s still a workout.
2. limbing and sawing tree up—with bowsaw this is a couple hours of warming fun, with chainsaw it’s still an hour
3. haul brush away—potentially a good couple hours of warmth here
4. haul log rounds—another hour
5. split logs—hours, accumulated (great exercise, builds BONES with the lovely shock value, but after awhile of setting up logs to split you’ll FEEL it in your lower back and you’ll consider buying a wood splittter)
6. stacking—decent warmth value
7. splitting kindling—ah, yes
8. hauling wood into house—seems to take an hour a day of lower-back intensive hustling and bustling around, what with the fire-lighting and all—getting enough wood into a house is a major ongoing piece-a-work—many soon buy a cart and build a wood chute thru the wall—carrying enough wood to heat a house all winter IN YOUR ARMS into the house is enough to drive one to fossil fuels
9. enjoy the warmth of fire
10. sip warming whisky while reading book in chair near fire
