This sunday we prevailed upon Jen’s sister and her boyfriend to help us with a little outdoor project. I’ve been wanting to get our woodpile up off the ground and split ever since we felled the tree, and we finally rented a hydraulic splitter to take care of it all this weekend.

The first thing we needed was a new cradle to store it in, so I built one out of pressure-treated lumber.

Meanwhile, Jen disassembled the old pile and got it ready for splitting.

With four people, we made pretty short work of the job. All the huge stump-sized hulks are now fireplace-sized bits, we have a full stack stored six inches off the ground, another pile stored under the porch, and we gave some to our neighbor as a show of goodwill. Addendum: According to this site, a cord of wood is 8′ x 4′ x 4′, or 128 cubic feet. The cradle I built is 12′ x 4′ x 2′, or about 96 cubic feet. Adding the pile under the porch, I’d say we split a cord of wood yesterday.

Of course, it’s hard to get manual labor without some kind of bribe, and in this case it was beer and a homemade dinner of brisket, fresh corn, mashed potatoes, cornbread, and stuffed jalapeno peppers from our garden, in front of a roaring fire. MMMM, home cooking and woodsmoke.