I don't just love Christmas for the presents, turkey and rest; I also love the little rituals that go with it like getting the logs ready to last the week.
Every Christmas, for as long as I have had a wood burning stove or an open fire, I have spent a leisurely day (sometimes more) splitting logs on Christmas Eve.
This year has turned out a little different because the job is already done - having spent two evenings in the woods cutting down dead oak's that can just be cut - ready to burn.
I have about a two acre wood of mainly oak. There are a few ash, some hazel, a few hawthorn and the odd field maple. On the main though, 98% are oak.
I didn't cut enough two years ago to get me through the winter and the earlier cold snap has meant that we have already burned a great deal.
I looked for all the old oak, usually young trees, that died naturally but have remained standing. These trees are fantastic because they have seasoned standing up and are as dry as a bone. Just cut them down (they vary from wrist thick to the size of a man's thigh.
I have a Godin wood burning cooker in the kitchen that can take 50cm lengths (this saves an awful lot of time) so I cut to about 45cm, stack them straight into my tractor back box and place them on a pallet just outside the French kitchen doors. There is (was) enough for the whole Christmas week and it means we do not have to go up into the top barn and bring down a barrow at a time.
Christmas wood cutting is a tradition in other families it seems. Danielle Bertrand, my French neighbour, has borrowed in a very heavy duty 20 ton log splitter from the Cuma (cooperative) attached to his vintage David Brown tractor.
Danielle and his son were chain sawing big rounds of seasoned wood and then splitting them into one metre lengths and stacking them up.
I would kill for his wood pile. I don't know about the Christmas week, his pile would last three years.
There are some amazingly low prices on heavy duty log splitters going at the moment.
Check out this heavy duty log splitter and the range of chainsaws.
Comments