Wood (yes, again)

Some while ago, you may recall, our elderly occasional neighbour M Benazet gave us permission to recover whatever wood we wanted from his wooded land just down the lane from the house. Over a period of a few months, I have been getting together a pile of useable loose wood on the land, but that is just a tiny part of what we have permission to recover. We currently have a good spell of clear dry weather so, with the contents of the woodshed dwindling, we thought it an opportune time to tackle the land and see just what it could yield. So yesterday, we ventured down and discovered two fallen trees (beech, we believe), that have probably been down for a couple of years judging by the dryness of the wood - ideal burning material for the woodburner. So the first step was to chainsaw the first, larger one into sections that could be easily sent down the hill for further sectioning and eventual loading into the car for transportation the short distance up the road. The terrain that we were working on was a moderately sloping woodland area with masses of dead leaves underfoot which made it a tricky process. The big tree was taken from an area in the top right of this photo. I am standing on the road to take the photo;

Then today, we returned to the woodland to recover what we could. We started by reducing the longer lengths to lengths that would fit in the car then chainsawed the bigger sections from the 1st fallen beech into more manageable sections and also sectioned the 2nd fallen tree into manageable lengths. The whole lot was then gently rolled down the slope towards the roadside ready for transporting back to Pissou. These logs are a sample from the 1st large beech tree;5 car loads (estate car) and 5 hours later we had collected more than enough to see us through the winter/early spring. It is all piled up outside the back of the house ready for splitting/further chainsawing tomorrow. As I have said on previous occasions, wood collecting and processing is one of my favourite jobs at Pissou at is both physically demanding and also immensely productive!