MIKE’S NEW TOY

Mike and I spent the last two mornings splitting fir rounds into firewood with his new Bilt Hard 35-ton log splitter. I was the assistant, and my task was to toss the firewood into the pile as it came off the splitter. Sometimes I pushed the lever while Mike held the rounds in place. We will eventually haul this firewood to town, so there’s loading and unloading in our future. We feel pressed to get it done and out of the field. They disked the fields yesterday in preparation for planting canola next month.

Serving as an assistant is not interesting to me, so at some point I  go into my “zone” and think about other things. I thought of Chris’ new Bernina 730QE Pro and pondered if I’d like to have one, too. Chris says it’s an amazing machine. (Chris should be an ambassador for Bernina.) The thing is, a person can buy seven Bilt Hard splitters for the cost of the 730. It’s hardly a straight-across trade – not in terms of money anyway.

And I thought of my Grandfather Portfors. When he was Mike’s age, he lamented that he could no longer swing an ax but he still remembered what it felt like. Speaking of bygone days with a faraway look in his eyes, he said, “A man could swing an ax in the woods for a dollar a day,” as if that were big wages. Maybe it was for him in that day and time.

And as Mike was separating wood fiber with a hatchet, I thought of my dad, whose vocation from a young age was playing and teaching piano. I recalled that he had a misshapen thumb as the result of an accident while cutting wood. Writing in 1934, Aunt Bertha tells about it: “Vance was cutting wood lately and I suppose holding it with one hand and the ax glanced with the usual result. It severed some of the tendons on the back of left hand; they took him to the doctor and after stitching it up he could use his fingers.” Daddy told me of his gratitude that the doctor had found a way to reattach the tendons so that he didn’t lose the use of his fingers – and his vocation.

I wondered if the wood splitter would be safe, but I think it’s altogether safer and less labor-intensive than chopping wood with an ax. The operator controls the blade as it moves through the wood, and the chunks fall off to the sides. KW