January day cutting firewood

For reasons of health & time, I didn't have everything split and waiting for winter.
I do have enough wood, but a lot is still in logs (old enough to not be green) that need to be bucked and split.

So I didn't have much choice if I wanted heat this upcoming week without hitting my "special reserve" of rapidly dwindling split stuff then to go out with the saw and tools and make some firewood.

Even if it was 12º. Maybe 13º. But sunny and warming quickly towards 20º

1) Hmmm, have I ever switched the air intake thingy on the Stihl to cold weather mode? I remember 11 years ago hauling trees across the pond, so maybe then.

2) Whats worse then fogging on safety/sun glasses? Your sweat freezing the instant a drop hits them.

3) The bug I found was NOT an Asian Long Horn beetle, to my great relief. It was black & white and 1-1/4 long, but was an Eastern Eyed Clicking Beetle. Visions of my property being turned into pasture courtesy of USDA were dancing in my head till I determined that.

4) Most of the sycamore was not bad to split, but the bottom 5' or so has some of the nastiest, stringiest heart wood I have ever encountered.

5) Whats worse the sweat freezing to your glasses? After you eat lunch, you come back out and the sun goes behind the clouds.

And the moisture on your gloves start to form an ice layer on your fiberglass handled tools. The Fiskars wasn't bad at all, but the maul and sledge...that took a lot of extra concentration. And the steel wedges were like holding onto a greased pig.

6) I didn't have the other yellow link chain hanging where I thought it was when I went to bring all my chains to the guy who sharpens them, town highway crewman who works the dump on Saturdays. Oh well, well get the other yellow and the green sharpened.

And there was nothing good to scavenge from the dump, either.

7) Sycamores burning nice but pretty darn fast. It's bone dry, at least what I'm burning right now.

IF I can get a couple hour window between snow storms 1 and 2 tomorrow, I'll have to break out my new chain and buck a couple more 24" logs off my nice, long burning ash to mix in with this stuff during the week.

I suspect the big difference is the ash was on the ground, and is still pretty moist -- any moister I'd call it green.

Overall, it was a nice day -- I'm starting to get into my wood cutting shape. I just want to be able to get a couple weeks ahead so I can have a great chainsaw massacre and start felling trees for next year's supply!