FIREWOOD

Our house is well insulated and we have a good furnace.

 So when the weather looks like this...

 …and this.  We can stay cozy and warm inside.  Although the heating bills are chilling.

But just in case crap happens, we have a back-up plan to survive arctic weather.  We have a little wood stove in the basement where we can cuddle up and enjoy a fire when the nights are long and the toes are icy.

But that means we need firewood.  Stashing wood for the winter is a messy, sweaty job.  The forest service issues inexpensive wood cutting permits; and years ago we would go to the mountains several weekends every summer and saw and haul and stack firewood and bring it home.  That fuel was expensive in so many ways.  Now there is a business not far from here which builds log homes.  They sell the scrap wood cut and blocked so all the guys need to do is bring it home.

 And split it.  Before Beavis came back to live with us, DH and I would rent a mechanical splitter for an afternoon.  It’s the nearest experience to working with explosives I’ve ever had.

 Now our son saves himself a trip to the weight room and does us all a favor by attacking the wood with a splitting maul.

 The remarkable thing is that he can accomplish so much so fast and never lose those pants that are getting too big for him with all the biking and working.

 "Good blocks of oak it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;

And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock."
(Exerpt from Two Tramps in Mud Time by Robert Frost

 One more cord of wood and we’ll have our stockpile for the winter.

Then DH has to tune up that snow thrower over there on the left.