“Don’t cut the logs too long – they’re just little guys,” Nancy Kalal advised me.

She was giving instructions on how to prepare for the arrival of her “little guys,” Bright and Star, 13-month shorthorn oxen that weigh half a ton apiece. Their job: Drag logs heaped in the woods behind our house closer to the woodsheds.

After I wrote a column in November, “There’s no such thing as too much firewood,” in which I bemoaned the never-ending toil of heating with wood, Nancy emailed me with a tantalizing offer: Would I be interested in having her oxen help skid logs?

She might as well have asked if I could use a new kayak, or be willing to represent the United States in the Olympic ax-throwing competition.

“How soon can they come?” I replied.

“They’re still learning,” Nancy cautioned, explaining that she needed more time to train Bright and Star, and they could use some bulking up. Young oxen – technically called working steers until their teeth come in at about age 4 – can gain up to three pounds a day before reaching their peak weight of 2,500-3,000 pounds.

We agreed to wait a couple months. That gave me time to cut down a few small trees and a large, dead black birch. I also had to clear a new path – my old trails were too narrow for a pair of yoked oxen.

At last, “O-Day” took place last week, when Bright and Star arrived in a trailer towed behind a pickup truck driven by Nancy’s husband, Tom. The couple has been raising oxen on their East Lyme farm for more than 20 years.

My neighbors, Betsy and Bob Graham, allowed the Kalals to park in their driveway, which is closer to a wide path leading a couple hundred yards uphill to my log pile.

“Very handsome animals,” I said, after Bright and Star lumbered down a ramp from the trailer and stood calmly while Nancy and Betsy, a veterinarian, groomed them.

“Brushing helps them relax,” Nancy said.

“They already look pretty mellow,” I observed, scratching the underside of Bright’s chin.

Soon, Nancy slipped curved hickory bows around their necks and attached yokes that Tom makes from linden wood. He then clipped on a heavy chain, and handed the loose end to Nancy.

“Come up!” she ordered, and the team began shuffling up the path.

Nancy taught the oxen four other commands: “whoa” to stop, “back” to reverse direction, “gee” to turn right and “haw” to turn left. She also carried a goad stick to tap Bright and Star lightly if they didn’t respond. Responsible, caring teamsters never whip or smack their animals, she said.

Ten minutes after starting up the trail, Bright and Star reached the log pile, where Nancy spent another few minutes turning them around. Meanwhile, Tom lashed three small logs together that combined weighed about 50 pounds. Then, with Bob’s help, he hooked a towing chain in place. All systems were go.

“Come up!” Nancy called, and the load slid easily over the soft earth. The oxen might as well have been towing soda straws – didn’t even bat an eye.

A hundred yards and not more than a minute later, they reached a clearing not far from my woodsheds. This was the end of the line – I would have to carry or drag the logs the final, twisting narrow stretch.

Tom unhooked the chain, Nancy issued the “come up” order, and the oxen returned for the next trip.

After three easy runs with light loads, it was time to see why oxen, which were first used by Egyptians more than 6,000 years ago, are so valued as draft animals.

“Go ahead, cut a bigger log,” Tom instructed.

I moved the tip of my chain saw about three feet from the foot-thick end of the dead birch trunk, which lay on the ground.

“This enough?” I asked.

“Farther,” Tom said.

I moved the end of the saw another foot or so.

“How about now?”

“Farther,” Tom repeated.

When I reached a length of about six feet, bringing the weight of the log to about 300 pounds, he nodded his head, and I started the saw.

Tom and Bob reconnected the chain, Nancy gave a command, and Bright and Star began pulling. This time, they paused when the chain tightened, but a moment later, following Nancy’s prompts, resumed tugging. They’re trained to keep the chain taut, she said.

Once again, the large log slid easily over the ground, and they covered the distance in about the same amount of time as with lighter loads. On the way back to the log pile, they stopped briefly to munch on the lower branches of spruce trees.

They repeated this feat a couple more times before we decided it was time for animals and people to rest.

“I’m impressed,” I said, back at the trailer, where Nancy rewarded Bright and Star with handfuls of grain before the ride back to East Lyme.

Nancy told me I’ll be even more impressed when Bright and Star are fully grown in two to three years and can drag entire trees weighing several tons, just as the oxen she and Tom previously raised have done. After considerable begging by their son, Kevin, they acquired their first ox, Buster, more than 20 years ago from farming neighbors, Cappy and Juanita Chappel.

“Buster was a terrible ox from a work point of view, but he adored doing projects with people, such as hauling hot cocoa for the Boy Scouts at the Niantic Light Parade,” Nancy recalled. Next came Rock and Roll, followed by Neon and Moon.

“Built like bulldozers, they could haul a ton without blinking,” Nancy said. That pair belonged to a young woman from Massachusetts who had trained them for years before she left for college, and then reclaimed them after she graduated last year.

Before she became a teamster, Nancy, who grew up on a dairy farm, worked as an emergency room nurse at Lawrence + Memorial Hospital in New London, and has since become a large-animal veterinary technician.

Tom had retired from his landscaping business when they bought overgrown pastures on Grassy Hill Road and converted them into Cranberry Meadow Farm in 2000. He leaves the ox training to Nancy and devotes most of his time to raising organic fruits and vegetables.

“He is really good at it. We have fresh lettuce/greens until mid-February, and root crops year-round. We laugh about his side of the driveway and mine. Lord help me if an animal escapes and enjoys the fruits of his labors, trampling his crops,” Nancy said.

Though he professes to being a bystander when it comes to ox-raising, Tom is a big fan of the animals when it comes to hauling logs.

Oxen don’t rip up huge swaths of ground the way tractors do, and unlike draft horses, they have cloven hooves that are less likely to get stuck in the mud, he explained. These hooves also don’t track seeds from invasive plants, as horse hooves sometimes do, he said. Tom also noted that oxen can graze on grass and other plants, while horses must be fed grain.

“When do you want us back?” Nancy asked as she opened the truck door.

“What are you doing tomorrow?” I joked.

Actually, I now have a lot of splitting and stacking to do, but once those tasks are finished, I’m looking forward to more oxen labor.

Now, if I can only get them to stoke the stove in the middle of the night.