Log Splitting

Another pine tree nearly finished

Tidying up our Woodland

The soil here is very poor and even the large trees find it difficult to put in deep roots.  Whenever we have a storm some trees are either left leaning at a precarious angle or are blown down totally.  This is particularly true of the pine trees which are about 30 - 35 metres high with a large canopy.  These tower over the broadleaved trees like the oak, cherry, sweet chestnut and hazel, which nonetheless still need to bolt upwards in an attempt to get some light.

Our intention is to chop down two of these pine trees every winter, both to improve the growing conditions for the broadleaved trees and to provide a source of firewood.  We haven't counted all of the pines yet but we think that we should have sufficient wood for 20 years if we can keep it to two trees a year.  Interestingly, our French friends think that we are extremely misguided in wanting to burn pine as they say it doesn't produce any heat and gums up the chimney.  We have tried explaining to them that the Scots and the Scandinavians rely totally on pine, and their winters are much harsher, but they just won't accept it.  Anyway, we have been burning seasoned pine since February and it is very good.  It doesn't burn as hot as oak, or for as long, but it definitely heats up our room very well.

In the winter of 2009- 2010 we had to chop down this large pine tree in our woods because it was leaning dangerously across one of our paths.  We chose to chop it down using a hand saw, but the tree was too big to chop into logs.

We left it sitting on the forest floor for the summer to dry out a little and in the autumn a friend arrived with his chainsaw to chop it into segments suitable for burning in our wood fire.

At the same time he chopped up a sweet chestnut that had fallen into the ravine and a mature oak that had also been blown over in the storm.

Pine log being split

Splitting Logs 

We were surprised at how easy the chestnut was to split using a log splitting grenade and mawl.  If we hadn't known that it was a hardwood we would have taken a lot of convincing - if only all the logs were that easy.

The oak was much more difficult to split but with perseverance and a lot of sweat we got through them and all of these logs are now drying out beautifully on our log pile.

Pile of cut pine logs drying before splitting

Letting Them Dry Out

The pine is a different matter altogether and even now, 18 months on, it is nearly impossible to split, even though they have been piled up off the ground.

Yesterday, we tried a couple of logs and they were still full of liquid, with the mawl coming out wet when we tried to split them.  We will have to remove the bark off the logs so that they can dry out more quickly, but that is ok because like everything here we have a use for it.