In a world where so many things are made fast and cheap, when you can try and support business’s that create items to last. I was thrilled to see that Hultafors who have been making and selling Axes from Sweden since the 1700’s offer a 50 year lifetime warranty on the axe head.

When it comes to buying high quality tools locally in person, the best place to head to for garden tools, farm tools and wood working is Lee Valley who has a big old store in Ottawa. This is where i find and pay good money for high quality tools, like my steam juicer from Finland, and my garden tools from Germany and in this case a splitting axe from Sweden.

There were splitting axes at the local store for around 100 to 150, and i have had one for a good number of years or you could if you can afford to do so, pay another hundred including 13 percent tax for one that comes with this type of warranty

The first badly damaged set of old grandfather trees, was black willow so we had it hauled away by the semi truck load. However these were big old Norway maples and while not premium fire, it certainly gets the job done.

We have been very luck so far that we have had so few trees come down in some of the bigger storms, as others have had far worse damage then we have. Still when the storm brought down a number of my big trees, we knew they would need to be cut down and worked into firewood, but some of it is way to big to split by hand and we will be renting a wood splitter and or borrowing one depending.

Because we do not have our own forest, its not normal for us to do our big firewood, we do smaller trees and such but normally buy our firewood already dried, split and aged by 10 cords at a time delivered to the farm.

This year there will be a good amount of hand splitting on the smaller logs to stack and keep on drying them down. It was time for a new Axe. The first workout on the axe went very well indeed. Miss R got a very good workout and has informed me this morning that new muscles have been found lol, stretching is very good idea before and after.

What is your favorite splitting axe? Do you make a effort to buy from company’s that have been around for a long time? Do you buy your firewood or do you self harvest?

30 day mini challenge “get back into the habit of writing” -Day Seven! Thank you to the over 2 thousand folks who have read my posts and ramblings over the past week! I know that its been a while since i have been posting regular and i am grateful that so many are opening the posts by email and reading as well as the other ways folks get and read them.