OXFORD — In one of the Woodsmen’s Day contests at the Oxford County Fair on Friday, teams of two used a wooden tool called a peavey — reminiscent of a medieval weapon crossed with a farm tool — to roll a 10-foot log down a short track and back as fast as possible.
It proved a thorny problem.
“It’s really a small log — only a couple hundred pounds,” said Laurette Russell of New Gloucester, who has been competing in woodsmen events for the past 12 years. “But it’s so light it can prove hard to control. We’ve done logs that weigh up to 1,000 pounds.”
Russell trains throughout the year and, like most of the 40 or so people participating in the event, she travels in a circuit around New England and Canada.
Leo Lessard, 69, has been taking spike to log for the better part of 45 years. The Lyndon, Vt., resident partnered for the first time competitively with Matt Taylor of Peru, 39 years his junior.
They flew through the course, and afterward it became official that their combination of veteran savvy and youth proved the best overall time.
The log-rolling event did not impress Lessard.
“That little thing?” he said. “We never used to have logs that small. That’s what we would have called a good one-man log.”
Putting down the spiked peavey and picking up the saw, teams cut through 8- by 8-inch pine timbers with a two-man handsaw.
Afterward, Richard Jordan of Connecticut held up an end and traced the blade lines, showing how each captured the motion of the blade. A flat line was best, most efficient, and depicted harmony between team members.
The Oxford County Fair will continue Saturday featuring tractor and truck pulls.
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- Competitors use a peavey to roll a large log accurately down a short course at the Oxford County Fair Woodsmen’s Day on Friday. The tools are a refinement of hooks once employed by “river pigs” to free stuck logs floating down rivers to sawmills.
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- Draft horses pull 6,000 pounds of concrete during a timed competition at Oxford County Fair in Oxford on Friday.
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- A team races for the best time cutting an eight- by eight-inch square pine beam at the men’s crosscut saw competition at the Oxford County Fair in Oxford on Friday morning.
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- The ax leaving Laurette Russell’s hands is a blur as it loops toward a target at the Oxford County Fair in Oxford on Friday morning.
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- Jerry Gingras of Erroll, N.H., saws his way to a third-place finish in the super saw division of the Oxford County Fair Woodsmen’s Day on Friday in Oxford.
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- Driver Kevin Switzer Jr. leads the herd at the halfway point with Comical Princess at the Oxford County Fair on Friday. The eventual winner of the race, Artesa, with Heath Campbell, sits third.
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