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Me and my bike
- Thread starter esoxlucius
- Start date
The sea here has alot to offer; fishing (rod & reel) here is good, and I did a lot of spearfishing myself but that was years ago. Nothing to hunt here on land besides Green Iguanas. But that is a world apart from true hunting there in a temperate climate up north. There are basically no firearms allowed here and only a small, special division of the police carry firearms.It's never too late to start. The location shown for you isn't exactly a hunting paradise, true. Do you have perhaps some waterfowl hunting locally, or some sort of small game? Wild pigs, maybe?
And, assuming that you have somewhere locally that you can safely and legally develop the required marksmanship skills, whether it be with rifle, shotgun, archery tackle, etc...there are always exotic guided hunts to dream about.
Setting one's dinner table with vegetables from your garden alongside venison...which originally meant "meat from the hunt", i.e. game meat, not just deer meat...is supremely satisfying. And, as the father of one of my childhood hunting buddies used to say, "If you hunt with your kids, you'll never need to hunt for your kids".
Nope...that's tinder and kindling...no actual firewood in those pics...
Nope...that's tinder and kindling...no actual firewood in those pics...
Only winding you up, lol. Some of my firewood is quite substantial, see pic below. These things barely fit in the fireplace, but boy do they burn well.
Nice! Back in Ontario I had access to all kinds of scrap wood like that on various jobsites; a chunk like that one is an all-nighter! I often came home from work with the bed of my truck filled with stuff like that, and the owners of the jobsite were happy to see it go.
Nowadays, most of my wood is "in the rough"; lots of trees need to be taken down for various reasons, lots of others fall over for various other reasons, and I still need to buy some each year. I've always split it myself...with an axe...and in recent years I have started cutting it to length myself...with a chainsaw. Can't say I enjoy the latter, but once I have the lengths, splitting and quartering them is...when you are in the right mood...an absolutely joyous task. You are immersed in the rhythm and the motion of it; you revel in the solid thunk! of a good hit, and the wood flying to either side. The grunt that accompanies a perfect swing contrasts slightly with the growl of a bad one. A perfectly-balanced hand-sharpened axe is a magic wand. It's sublime.
It's the perfect activity for the mental and emotional yoga that this thread was discussing. Of all the various activities and hobbies and diversions on which I spend my time in retirement...my wife seems to prefer the term "waste" rather than "spend"...I think that splitting wood is the purest and most healing, of both body and mind.
Nowadays, most of my wood is "in the rough"; lots of trees need to be taken down for various reasons, lots of others fall over for various other reasons, and I still need to buy some each year. I've always split it myself...with an axe...and in recent years I have started cutting it to length myself...with a chainsaw. Can't say I enjoy the latter, but once I have the lengths, splitting and quartering them is...when you are in the right mood...an absolutely joyous task. You are immersed in the rhythm and the motion of it; you revel in the solid thunk! of a good hit, and the wood flying to either side. The grunt that accompanies a perfect swing contrasts slightly with the growl of a bad one. A perfectly-balanced hand-sharpened axe is a magic wand. It's sublime.
It's the perfect activity for the mental and emotional yoga that this thread was discussing. Of all the various activities and hobbies and diversions on which I spend my time in retirement...my wife seems to prefer the term "waste" rather than "spend"...I think that splitting wood is the purest and most healing, of both body and mind.
All my wood comes from work, we generate an insane amount of scrap wood. It does need preparing though and i also take great pleasure in chainsawing and sorting it out.
But the pleasure that gives me is absolutely nothing compared to the pleasure I feel when I remind myself that all this wood is FREE!!
Heating your home for nothing takes the word pleasure to a whole new level, lol.
But the pleasure that gives me is absolutely nothing compared to the pleasure I feel when I remind myself that all this wood is FREE!!
Heating your home for nothing takes the word pleasure to a whole new level, lol.
I definitely hear that!
I must admit, I'm quite cowardly about using a chainsaw, or even a handsaw, on much of the scrap wood from jobsites. Once you hit a screw or nail with a chainsaw...well, it's a sobering experience, even when you were stone cold sober to begin with. And once I was cutting an old poplar into lengths...and when one piece fell off I saw that I had missed a large nail that had been pounded into the tree at some distant point in the past, perhaps to hold a sign or something similar. My chain had literally grazed it lengthwise, exposing a streak of now-shiny metal to glint in the sun. Too close for comfort.
For scrap wood like yours, I typically replace the axe and saw...with a sledge and crowbar. No elegance, no fun...but more safety.
We burn a lot of that stuff outside as well, in a makeshift firepit consisting of an ancient steel tractor wheel lying on a bed of sand. No better place to enjoy a beer on an autumn evening.