SPOON: more wood, more wood, more wood

[kellan_the_tabby]

[ A heavy metal splitting wedge sticks out of the flat top of a good-sized log; a steel hammer sits on a smaller log next to it. ]

The nice thing about a wood stove is you can find & cut your own firewood, instead of having to pay some big company somewhere that’ll happily triple your bill when the people in charge want a new yacht.

The problem with a wood stove is you gotta find & cut your own firewood. I mean yeah, you can buy it, that’s how we started the winter, but we still hadda chop it into stove-sized pieces, & most of the stuff we’ve found since then (thank you, Wood Dude!) has needed cutting AND splitting. Like, yeah! Cutting & splitting your own firewood does warm you twice! Also, I think my arm just fell off.

Anyway today has been stressy because the news is horrible (don’t look at the news), so I spent basically most of it chopping logs, & finding more not-really-useful pallet wood & weird-sized leftover bits of plywood to cut into stoveworthy lengths. (Yeah, plywood has glue & stuff in it. But you know what it does? It burns.)

[ There’s a couple hunks of pallet wood sitting across two sawhorses. My hand is holding a red circlular saw, about to cut them in half. ]

I keep thinking I’ve found all the wood suitable to cut into short bits instead of saving, & then I find more, which is nice, we’re looking to need firewood for another month at least. I think we’ll need fires, at least some days, more of the year than otherwise, here. It’s all good — wood permits aren’t expensive — but it’s always gonna be a fair amount of work. But I’d rather put in the work than pay for someone else’s yacht.

Today was really nice! We stuck Marisol in Remy’s crate & left the front door open for a while; the house really does need to be aired out.

[ The longer wall of the house, with double glass-paned doors set into it. One of the two doors is sitting open. To the left of the doors is a line of pallets. One holds a big green plastic bucket with a single log just visible inside. ]

… but then Sigdis, mighty hunter, caught herself a self-propelled toy, & not only brought it inside, but made it upstairs before any of us caught her. Fortunately the kangaroo rat got loose & hid under one of my shelves, & Morgyn put on gloves & scooped it back out. Said rat has been deposited sufficiently far away, & all the cats are back inside now.

SCREEN DOORS.

Anyway I chopped a lot of wood. A Lot. Not all of this is from today, but most of it is. Ow.

But that? Should last us a week this time of year.

[ A stack of firewood, perhaps five feet wide by three feet high, sits on a pair of pallets next to the front door. The left side is held up by a tall hunk of plywood held in place by a third pallet and a filing cabinet. The right side is held up by careful stacking and optimism. ]

Also keeps the dog out of the firewood. Because apparently logs are tasty. I DO NOT KNOW WHY. WHY ARE DOGS.

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Comments

[stitchwhich]

The first time I met my in-laws was in the middle of winter. They lived in South Dakota and heated the house with a wood stove but (that year anyway) had not stockpiled much wood. I remember driving through snowstorms with my father-in-law to "harvest" deadfall on the sides of the roads, for hours. We went out about every other day. Finding sufficient wood on the edge of the Deadlands is tricky, especially since most trees are behind fences and owned by others, so it was a matter of scavenging along the one-lane roads. This necessity did not endear my father-in-law to me. (He was an ignorant and arrogant man who was sexist to boot. So his lack of forethought and planning was just the icing on the cake.)

[danabren]

Ew

[kellan_the_tabby]

... I kinda wish you could see the face I'm making right now, but you can probably imagine, so, close enough.

SO MANY SYMPATHIES