27.   We are now seven weeks into 2018 and today the Shed-Headz Crew finally got out for an outdoor winter adventure. The weather has so far this season been terrible with very little snow and extended mild spells here on the East Coast. This meant very little snow on the ground and very little ice on the ponds.

26.   We decided to head out to the Sooley family cabin for the day to cut up and stow away firewood replenishing what we've burned over the last couple years. After cleaning up an overnight 5cm snowfall French and I hit the highway westward to Whitbourne. Sooley was already at the cabin having left earlier that morning while Maffer will be joining us a little later.

25.   Last winter during our annual cabin trip we hauled down a bunch of firewood from the new Nalcor transmission line, we could have hauled more but the wood hauling trailer broke. 

24.   There was also quite a bit of wood already sawn that just needed to be split and stowed in the wood shed.

23.   With the job scoped out we set to work with French on the chainsaw, Sooley hauling with the bike and I operated the wood splitter.

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19.   Depending on the length of log, I added some spacers to shorten the stroke on the electric wood splitter. This greatly sped up the whole process.

18.   Maffer and family finally arrived around noon with his Can Am 800 beast in tow.

17.   Maffer made a couple upgrades recently including a new LED light bar and over 1000 screw in studs planted firmly in his Maxxis Mud Zillas.

16.  This should provide a wild amount of traction on glare ice and slippery winter ATV trails!

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13.   Later in the afternoon French started experimenting making Norwegian Cooking logs aka a fire log. He took a dry (seasoned) spruce chunk about 20" tall, 18" diameter and made 8 cuts straight down (about 3/4 of the way to the bottom) carving the top of the log like a pizza

12.   Next he stuffed the chainsaw grooves with wood shavings and birch bark.

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10.   He lit the shavings with a lighter and it caught surprisingly easily.

9.   As the tinder burns it lit the log pretty quick,  burned down to the bottom of the cuts and continued to burn slowly to the outside edges of the log.

8.   With the tinder consumed and log burning it's now ready for a frying pan or kettle rested directly on the wood. The fire burned really well and the log stayed structurally sound plenty long enough to cook a meal and boil the kettle.

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6.   This is not only great for cooking bur also for easily starting a campfire. As the cooking log burns you can begin adding more fuel as you will have a hot bed of coals to ignite new even green fuel. The logs used today burned well over two hours on their own.

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3.   By the end of the day we had all of the seasoned logs junked, split and stowed inside the woodshed. We organized the frosty outdoor wood on the left hand side to burn next year, and kept the already dry wood separate on the Right hand side.

2.   Late in the afternoon Sooley and I went down to the pond to check out the ice. We drilled a dozen holes and found a consistent 6" of hard clear ice in the middle of his small cove which allow us to at least walk out and do some ice fishing next weekend during the annual winter trip. This is the least amount of ice we've had in 20 years of our annual trip a testament to the brutally mild weather we've experienced this year.

1.   As darkness fell we put away the bikes and loaded up for the drive home. Our annual cabin trip is less than a week away, although the weather hasn't set us up with great conditions (snow or Ice) we're all still very much looking forward to our 20th annual winter adventure!

Cheers, MIKE

Copyright © 2025 Michael Smith