Happy New Year (and wood splitting)

To all of you who follow the blog and newcomers...Happy New Year.  Here at the Cooks Dock Road Winter Wonderland things are progressing according to plan. (I am still married and no blood has been shed, no egos bruised) We have lots of firewood cut, split and (mostly) dried. Nothing has broken down and the snow had stayed. None of this slushy stuff.
We hosted some friends here for 2 days (my former flight instructor and her husband) We also had company yesterday and a nice hike thru the woods.

     Speaking of cutting wood...a 20" Red Oak was harvested the other day. The pictures below show 16" but that was about 20 feet up the trunk.I have yet to cut up the lower section of the tree which is still lying in the forest. Normally I would split the wood with the gas powered 27 ton splitter but decided to split it the old fashioned way..with an axe. (Think Green and stay fit) When I was a kid 40 year ago my dad and I would go into the forest every winter to selectively cut wood. About 3 bush cords worth. It was all split by hand. And hauled out by the mighty 9 hp snowmobile. It's was hard work. Even at 10 below once you had been splitting for 10 min you were down to a t shirt to get rid of excess body heat!
So last night the temp dropped to minus 20. Perfect for splitting wood.  In the bottom picture I am wearing a fleece. The locals call it "Manitoulin Mink" (Thank you Doug for explaining the local terminology)  So there you go...high fashion for wood splitting. 
Ok...that it for this post. It's snowing again and I have to shovel!

PS: Did you know that 1 bush cord(4x4x8=128 cu/ft) of seasoned Red Oak contains 21 million BTU's of energy? That is roughly equal to 1000 L of propane.
(1 liter of propane =24000 btu's) 

16 " Diameter Red Oak

First Contact burying the axe.

Happy lumberjack. Temp was minus 13/C