Too wet for wood

Odd bits of wood waiting to be chopped

I've recently taken a short break from blogging and in the mean time this post has been sitting in my drafts waiting to be shared. Thankfully it is no longer so wet and I've been able to make a start at some of the work in our garden again.

Wood is very important to us. But one of the issues with this past winter's rain is that we've not been able to process any. Dry cold winter days are excellent for chopping wood and in past years the majority of ours has been completed by February. But when it's wet it becomes dangerous to use heavy tools or machinery and it seems as if we have had nothing but wet for the last few months.

Split logs.

Today we tried to make a start. It wasn't a great start. We split the wood in the above photo to encourage it to dry out (it was cut about a year ago but was still showing 30% moisture). It was a lot of effort for not much result. So, despite J wanting to get on with it, we stopped. And I pulled out my camera to take a wander around the garden.

Soft wood courtesy of a friend 

We have quite a few piles of wood in our garden at the moment waiting to be dealt with. This is unusual for us as we prefer to get it chopped, ready to dry over summer. There is a large pile of interestingly cut soft wood to plough through at some point.

Oak trunk with branches in the background

Our oak that had to come down is still sat there. Whilst most of the brushwood has been dumped in our dead hedge there are some larger branches to deal with as well as the trunk.

This is the last of our fire wood that is okay to burn. We've let our stores run really low this year, the logs in this photo will only last us a month if the weather turns cold (if it stays warm it should last significantly longer!) Hopefully our solar panels will kick in soon and contribute towards our hot water. Otherwise we might be getting a bit chilly around here.