Tag Archives: woodpile

My Folks #7 – Breaking Hay

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My folk’s rental business included two large hay wagons. Because they were four-wheeled trailers the front tires were articulated, so they turned as the tongue of the trailers were pulled into a turn. First by hand-pushing the trailers with my sisters and later by backing them with a tractor or car I got quite proficient at the reverse- of a reverse- steering it takes to maneuver eight wheels, with four of them able to turn, into a parking space.

To my boyhood mind another fascination with these trailers was the wire that came from each wheel. Each wire attached to a cable that ran along the center post of the trailers’ undercarriage to the tongue of the trailer. On the tongue of the trailer this cable was anchored to a second part of the tongue that slid an inch or so back and forth over the section of tongue that was attached to the trailer’s undercarriage. This second part of the tongue attached to the vehicle pulling the trailer.

Dad told me these wires and the sliding tongue controlled brakes for the hay wagons. Even after helping dad replace the break shoes I never really believed those flimsy wires and little bit of a sliding tongue would make any difference in controlling a trailer.

My dad died in 1977, when I was 32, and that summer we were getting the property ready for an estate auction. Among other collections were five large stacks of wood. My dad always liked big roaring fires in our home’s brick fireplace and our cabin’s cast iron Franklin stove, so he had plenty of justification for an ever expanding accumulation of wood. Previous woodpiles had made great forts when we were kids. 

In 1977 I had no fantasy of cutting all that wood and moving it to the mountain cabin but there were two randomly piled mounds that had already been cut down to the sizes that were useful at the cabin. It seemed practical and an honer to Dad to load up one of our big hay wagons and get a last load of wood to the cabin, so I recruited my friend Andy Venn to help out. 

We attached one trailer’s high sides around the flat bed of the wagon and began pitching in chunks of wood. I don’t remember it taking long at all on a pleasant spring day. Getting in the trailer, tossing them down and stacking them beside the cabin’s porch was just as rewarding.

The thing I remember being completely surprised by was the trailer’s breaks. I expected the big V-8 engine of my 1962 Mercury Monterey to pull the grade from Lucky Peak Dam to Highland Valley Summit, a climb of 922 feet in 4.4 miles. No problem there. It was the even steeper grade down to the Mores Creek Bridge, 527 feet in 2.6 miles, that I had been dreading. All that weight pushing against the car, and all that weight pushing the trailer to the side and around the brakes of the car if the tongue were ever so slightly out of true was a disaster in the making. It worried my mind.

It turned out I would never have known that trailer was following me down that hill if I had not attached the tongue to the car myself — and, of course, if I had been able to see anything but a wall of trailer in my rear view mirror. There was never the least bit of the trailer pushing on the car. Nor were there any lunges back and forth because the brakes were setting too strong, holding the trailer back until the car pulled the brakes off and the trailer ran forward pushing the tongue of the trailer into the car. Rather, that steep descent was as smooth as pulling a trailer on a level road.

Hay wagons get heavy, dear reader. Whether loaded with alfalfa, furniture, kids on a hay ride or stacks of wood. I had never thought about the need to break heavy trailers. Nor had I appreciated the clever and perfectly adept way those old timers had mechanically solved a serious problem.

Frost Valley #8: True Trees & Heavy Steel

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Frost Valley was named for a reason and a requirement for the private estate where I found myself being a handy man was two well-stocked woodpiles, one for the main house and one for the caretaker’s place. The caretaker, Stan, had been on the estate long enough to keep an eye out for promising firewood trees.

Once the early rush to keep grass mown and weeds out of the garden began to settle down, the earth in the forests had firmed up enough to get the 4X4 GMC Scout into the woods with a trailer. So we found ourselves tossing a chain saw and pry bars onto the trailer and setting out into the woods on barely noticeable ruts being overlapped with the branches of hardwood forest.

trees & steel photo

I figured we’d be searching for dying trees or gnarly old snags that would beautify the forest if removed, but Stan quickly set me straight. Perhaps such harvesting would beautify the forest, he agreed, but his job was to cut and split wood. And splitting gnarly snags and dying, unpredictable wood was a pain in the keester. Nope. He had his eye on the healthiest, straightest, most handsome trees in the forest—two or three he’d been eyeing for several years.

And handsome they were. Perhaps Elms? No matter. They stood straight and strong, with no branches for a long way up the trunk. I ended up appreciating that last detail.

It seemed a shame to me, chopping down such beautiful trees, but down they came.

In a surprisingly short time the first load was cut into foot-long sections, just right for the estate’s stoves, and loaded on the trailer. We hauled them to the shed area of the estate’s main compound, dumped them on the ground, and went back for more.

It would have taken less time if the final load had come out as easily as the rest of them. As Stan parked the Scout in the best place to pick up the last load he expressed concern for what looked like a soft spot in front of the Scout. But after testing the spot with his toe he figured it would be “OK.” Once the wood was loaded and the tools were in the back of the Scout it took only twenty feet for the weight of the load to turn “OK” to “creamy mud.”

Getting out to lock the front hubs of the Scout left us squishing in our socks. The granny gear and the four wheel drive just meant four wheels were digging in rather than two.

We cut our losses and walked back to the compound to get the tractor.

Next came the splitting—whether the logs we had just harvested or the dried harvest from the year before I don’t remember.

I do remember being taught how to split wood. First, to take the time to simply look at the cut end of each piece. Find the places it wants to be split. They are easy to find once you look for them—little cracks, usually around the edge, where the wood is already splitting. Then get the heavy maul high overhead and put most your effort into getting the sharp edge as close as you can to the little crack you’ve chosen. Yea, there is some effort put into the power to drive the maul through, but mostly gravity and the heavy steel will provide the oomph. Getting it where it will do the most good is what pops that wood open and sends two pieces clattering across the ground.

There is, of course, one other secret to splitting wood, and it is the secret that will keep you from having to twist and pull your maul out of a piece of wood that didn’t split. While reading the wood check the sides of the log for knots, the places where branches once were. You can split wood with the knot coming out the left or right side of your split, but no matter where the little cracks are running, if you try to drive your maul through a knot you will be putting more work into extracting the steel than it takes to split a dozen logs that pop right apart.

Trust me, I soon came to appreciate Stan’s insistence on trees that were straight and true and who’s branches (meaning strong knots) began way up the tree.

I was not a very strong guy, but I am six foot four, so by the time that maul smacked into those hardwood logs there was plenty of travel in that steel. I got to where I could split wood with the best of them and was surprised at how quickly those trees were turned into cords of split wood.

I can’t say as I’d want to make a living at it, but to this day I enjoy splitting wood. There is something very satisfying when the halves go flying several feet in two directions, as if the wood is glad to be liberated from itself.