​When chestnut trees were cut in winter, they had to be handled with care, because when they are frozen and hit with an axe, they will split clear through. Sometimes when just sawing logs in cold weather, they will split as soon as the air strikes the center of the log. As chestnut logs will split from end to end with a couple of axe blows in the winter, I presume that the farmers of old got their rails for fences in the wintertime, and drew them on sleds to the ends of stone walls. In olden days where stone walls ended, rail fences were put up the rest of the way. It must have been a tough job to do, but the farmers built miles of rail fences to enclose their fields in days long ago. Those chestnut rail fences lasted a hundred years or more. When I built up my farm that hadn't been farmed for twenty five years or more, many of those old rail fences were as good as when they had been built. But a few had rotted and the stone walls had settled, too, so then I got barbed wire and stretched and stapled the wire to the trees in a straight row and used the old rails for firewood. They were mixed with green hardwood and also used for kindling, as they were so easy to split.