In late February of 1980, I found myself outside in the freezing, windy, darkness of the heart of winter, chipping ice and snow off a pile of green firewood to try to get something, anything, to feed our fairly large wood stove, a stove that if we were able to give it anything meaningful in the way of fuel, would be able to keep us toasty warm. We were in our early twenties and learning by doing. This is the same method terrible parents use to teach their children to swim-- they toss them in the water and yell, "good luck!" Of course, we had done this to ourselves and had no one else to blame.
Lesson learned, for the last thirty-some years I have kept three winters' worth of firewood on hand, in the basement. We'd use a couple of cords over the winter, and replace them the next year-- to be burned three winters later. This was a fairly good system, but over the course of three decades, a fair amount of debris, detritus, sawdust, bark, and shards of wood accumulated in the basement floor. This was undesirable for a number of reasons, not least of which it all absorbed and held moisture. You'd rather not have all that moisture just hanging around, there is no advantage, and some reasons to discourage it.
So for the first time since the 1980s, I left my wood run out, so I could get to the basement floor. The floor was then cleaned up, first by William, who filled bag after bag after bag with the dibblings, and then by Chloe, the Hired Hand. She was able to finish what he had made a good start of, and then jigsawed together a slew pallets that I had gathered and brought to the estate, and wrestled into the basement with the help of Martin some time before. Once accomplished, Chloe pitched five and a half cords of wood in the basement, through a new hatch I'd built with Dave, my friend and carpenter, and then she started stacking. And stacking. And stacking. So much stacking-- with the half a cord of wood Rachel and I had already chivvied into the basement, she stacked about five and a half cords, roughly 700 cubic feet of (heavy, mostly green) wood, leaving me just about half a cord to finish the job. I'll get the last bit done soon, and then we'll be back on track, and after three years we'll once again be burning three-year-old wood every heating season.
In late February of 1980, I found myself outside in the freezing, windy, darkness of the heart of winter, chipping ice and snow off a pile of green firewood to try to get something, anything, to feed our fairly large wood stove, a stove that if we were able to give it anything meaningful in the way of fuel, would be able to keep us toasty warm. We were in our early twenties and learning by doing. This is the same method terrible parents use to teach their children to swim-- they toss them in the water and yell, "good luck!" Of course, we had done this to ourselves and had no one else to blame.
Lesson learned, for the last thirty-some years I have kept three winters' worth of firewood on hand, in the basement. We'd use a couple of cords over the winter, and replace them the next year-- to be burned three winters later. This was a fairly good system, but over the course of three decades, a fair amount of debris, detritus, sawdust, bark, and shards of wood accumulated in the basement floor. This was undesirable for a number of reasons, not least of which it all absorbed and held moisture. You'd rather not have all that moisture just hanging around, there is no advantage, and some reasons to discourage it.
So for the first time since the 1980s, I left my wood run out, so I could get to the basement floor. The floor was then cleaned up, first by William, who filled bag after bag after bag with the dibblings, and then by Chloe, the Hired Hand. She was able to finish what he had made a good start of, and then jigsawed together a slew pallets that I had gathered and brought to the estate, and wrestled into the basement with the help of Martin some time before. Once accomplished, Chloe pitched five and a half cords of wood in the basement, through a new hatch I'd built with Dave, my friend and carpenter, and then she started stacking. And stacking. And stacking. So much stacking-- with the half a cord of wood Rachel and I had already chivvied into the basement, she stacked about five and a half cords, roughly 700 cubic feet of (heavy, mostly green) wood, leaving me just about half a cord to finish the job. I'll get the last bit done soon, and then we'll be back on track, and after three years we'll once again be burning three-year-old wood every heating season.
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