Vlaams Brabants Kampioenschap Houthakken

That title translates to Flemish Brabant Championship Chopping Wood, which was held at Ganzenpootvijver in Groenendaal (that means Goose Pond Leg in the area of Groenendaal).  Sonya and the kids decided this could be fun to watch so we set off for an afternoon of wood chopping!

The gentleman above is to be chopping off the pole below the tape line - we think he needs to reconsider how he holds his ax to chop...

There was a relay type part of the competition - each wood cutter had to go thru several stations and were timed as they did it - the first station is above.  The had to cut the log into 8 vertical pie pieces for the first bit, then when they came back to it at the end they had to cut it horizontally just above the white paint to make 8 separate pieces.

At the second stop they had to cut half way down each end of this log in as thin a slice as possible, then when they came back at the end they had to cut up from the bottom to make the pieces fall off in a circle.

Next stop had them removing all the bark from a log...

Then chopping a log in half...  Some of these guys were quite good, but we felt really bad for #6 since he had chainsaw malfunction and could not get his to start in the middle of the relay...

This is another event - each one had to use their chainsaw to cut two rectangles out of the sides of the vertical log so it was left with what you see below (and it wasn't allowed to break!)

Here's some more of the chopping down of the pole - these two had quite a lot of trouble and didn't do very well.

There were other events as well.  Like slicing thin circles out of a log standing vertically on the ground - each slice had to stay balanced on top of the log as they cut the next one under it and at the end they tested the width of those circles left on top and only those thin enough counted for each cutter - balancing and thin pieces was quite tough.  The crowd really got into it all and the whole thing was a lot of fun!