Okay, this’ll be the last post about the giant pile of wood in my backyard, or my wood-chopping weather woes, but dang it, if it don’t feel good to get that pile o’ wood chopped and stacked!

Check it. From this:

To this:

It’s all ready to go into the stove once the first snows hit. Just knowing that I’m ready for winter makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.

The key to getting this job done was a sunny day (finally!) and a new, big, bad ax. I always knew the ax I was using was too small, but never bothered to buy a new one (there aren’t a lot of ax dealers in downtown Toronto.) But the handle on the small ax started to look a bit dodgy and even I know using a dodgy ax is just asking for trouble. So I went out to Canadian Tire and upgraded to the big leagues. In chopping wood, as with other matters in life, size does matter. Compare and contrast these two wood crunchers:

No contest! Big ol’ yellow handle decimated the stumps and chunks in a single whack. It was great and I was actually sad when I had chopped through the pile because I was really getting the hang of swinging that thing. Never worry though, life is long and the future will hold many more piles of wood.

So, this ends my wood chopping adventure for another year. But it is only the beginning of our story. I still got to burn this sucker! Yup, it’s going to be a toasty winter.