Good point to keep in mind! We have our chimney swept once yearly, and burn only wood that was cut no later than the previous spring. We season our wood outside in an open-air covered-top gizmo I cobbled together using concrete slabs for flooring, metal and wood vertical supports and a corrugated-steel roof with a nice curve that sheds rain and snow.
The wood from these trees is going to be a nice freebie, but it likely won't be cut and split until the spring, and then won't go into the fire before next winter.
I have only been out chopping once since our much-colder temperatures hit a few days ago. The outside of the trees appears to be frozen solid, and the axe blade hits and bites with a completely different sound and feel than back when I started. The first tree I did in the colder temps was already half-chopped from the previous session; the exposed interior wood felt like iron. I finished felling that one, and then the next one I started felt the same way until I got deep into it. That freshly-exposed interior wood felt like cheese compared to the frozen one! I was huffing and puffing and blowing a lot of steam during the cutting, and once I got into the middle of the tree there was a fair bit of steam rising from each bite into the softer interior wood. With the sun slanting down between the branches and back-lighting all that steam it made for a fairly surreal picture.
Continued loosening of the handle has put my chopping on hold for a bit. I want to re-handle the axe and also do a bit of research regarding chopping of frozen wood and how it affects blade performance and also safety.
Anybody ever watch Forged In Fire? The blade testing in that show, and the competition cutting on the sister show Knife Or Death, always looked to me like it would be a hoot; now I get to do it myself!
