How much wood would a woodchuck chuck

Good morning you lovely people

Apparently May is Mental Health Awareness Month, so to get the ball rolling I just want to say my name is Phil and I suffer from Endogenous Depression.

Most of the time like everyone else I’m OK, but every so often I need to take a break and reset my clock and this happened recently and my GP suggested changing my prescription which I was happy about.

The only problem is the transition period which I’m in now. It’s horrible; swathing mood swings, ennui, headaches, pressure and apathy. It’s going to be a fun couple of weeks. I’ve had this for the past couple of days. I went into work yesterday and finished off a job I had promised someone and then came home as I could feel myself sinking fast.

To try and alleviate that feeling this morning I thought I would cut and split a cord of pine for use with the fire pit and brazier; exercise is brilliant for helping my mood. It’s even better when the sun is shining!

I got everything assembled, got the log in the wood jaws and marked out the lengths I wanted. The pine was only collected a few months ago and was freshly felled so it’s still very green and resinous. It layman’s terms it means it’s bloody hard going sawing it into lengths.

Anyway, I set about my task with gusto and soon had the first length cut and was on to the second length. As I was now further into the log I could feel the blade of my bowsaw sticking so I decided to open up the cut by knocking a log grenade into it (a log grenade is a very heavy tapered lump of metal used for splitting wood).

With the grenade in place I soon had the second length cut and I was onto the third. I left it sitting on the workmate just in case I should need it again

I should mention at this point that I’m quite cavalier with my own personal safety – see Mary for details. I was wearing leather work gloves this morning; it only takes one cut from the teeth of a bowsaw to instil that lesson. I was also wearing my favourite footwear as well; flip flops. Those of you who are far sighted will have already figured out what happened, for everyone else it unfolded like this………

I was there happily sawing away with the grenade sitting on the workmate. I should mention that the grenade weighs approximately 3lb or 1.4kg. With each stroke it was edging closer to the side of the bench until the inevitable happened, it overbalanced and dropped point first on to my flip flop protected foot. And I swore. A lot. I also felt quite sick. As it turned out I was very lucky as the injury turned out to be quite Omega 3 (super fish oil - superficial!) and did present me with a funny anecdote for later use, but on another day who knows.

Anyway, after calming down I got the rest of the cord cut and then split into halves and quarters and stacked on a plastic pallet to help it dry and season to make good firewood, leaving me with the second cord to tackle at a later date (probably this weekend).

Now that I’ve spent a couple of hours splitting wood I feel pretty good, apart from an aching toe. So if you want some advice from Dr Phil go and spilt some firewood, just make sure you’re wearing the appropriate footwear!