I love chopping wood. So much so that my wife will mention my neglect of other chores if I've been handling the splitter too much.
Our family lives in a rural setting, in some mountains that border a metropolitan area. As such, we are permitted to burn fires in firepaces. Of course, burning your wood a high efficiency wood stove or similar technology is much more advisable in order to minimize pollutants emitted from your chimney.
One thing I love about chopping wood in the high sun shirtless is that it provides me a number of different benefits:
The home heating point is obvious.
As for optimal exercise, I believe that my optimal fat-burning heart rate is about 100 beats per minute. This belief is based on certain tests done on me, corroborated by my own experience and observations. Anyway, chopping wood for 30+ minutes causes my heart to beat at a per minute rate between 80 and 100. And exercising around this heart rate generates energy for me. That is, when I'm done -- be it after 30 minutes, 1 hour, or two -- I feel more energetic than when I started.
Finally, the shirtless/high-noon/no-sunscreen aspect of the activity buys me plenty of Vitamin D production (see SUNARC.org). Of course, it's important to make sure your skin doesn't burn. That's where the problems begin with too much sun. But my skin is olive tinged, tans quickly, and stays tanned through most months of the year. So where I live -- at about 37 degrees latitude -- I can be out there for a long time without a problem.
Well, at least until my wife says: "Peter, don't you think it's time you ... ."
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