I'm a Lumberjack

Today was great. We went to the woods, that Peter and Julie own, about a 20 min drive from their farm to work gathering firewood for the winter. They have a very interesting process called copicing. It's a form of woodland management where you cycle through a patch of land every 12 years. You choose and area (1/12 of the total), cut down all of the trees but leaving a substantial amount of trunk. The trunk then sprouts a cluster of new growth, which will grow throughout the next 12 years. This has the advantage of trees not having to start from scratch each year, the root system is already firmly in place. This drastically increased the rate of growth over the lifespan, and also makes the entire process much easier. Trees that have been copiced year after year eventually form a rather attractive, spread out ring of new trees. Peter pointed out that using a patch of land in this way, is not only incredibly sustainable, but also essentially carbon neutral. The new growth of each year should essentially equal the amount of wood that's being used in a given winter, thus recapturing an equivalent amount of CO2.
The days work was incredibly satisfying and equally exhausting. The patch of woods that they own was copiced years ago, but has been abandoned recently, so is somewhat in disaray. They are trying to establish the old patterns of growth, while also clearing out some of the overgrowth that has occured. It was my job to look for dead but standing trees and chop them down, and drag them to the clearing where they were chopped up with a chainsaw and stacked. The best part (haha) was that the didn't want me using the chainsaw (which I semi-understand, they dont' want anything to go wrong) so I did all of my cutting by hand. None of the trees were larger than maybe 7-8 in. across, but tree after tree added up, especially when I was dragging them 50 ft. or so through the woods. Basically, it was awesome, I'm totally caput, and totally enjoyed my woodsman time. Check out the picture of the huge woodpile I cut down and dragged on flickr. my username is, predictably, orionofthewings and this might lead to my photostream...
Tomorrows my last day, then, au nord!