Disruption

Although I have been spending any shop time over the past few months cleaning, tidying, and reorganizing the barn, I had long ago penciled-in this week as Firewood Week 2026/7.  We are deep into Winter 2025/6 with an extended forecast of unseasonably cold weather, with overnight lows for the next fortnight running at or below zero.  That was motivation to get a good jump on next winter and beyond (we’re fine for this winter).

My target was the cluster of windfall trees (mostly maple and birch IIRC) that came down in a storm some time ago, up the hill behind the cabin.  The main trunks on these are all 18-24″, a few a bit more.  The beauty of such a trove is that it is already down but standing above the ground, making it easy to get to while seasoning “on the hoof.”  I’ll have to clear a couple of scrub saplings to get my 4WD S10 up there but if the ground is clear it will be a piece o’ cake.

Then came the disheartening forecast last week for a Storm of the Century!!! with somewhere between 12 and 24 inches of snow.  Such an event would disrupt my firewood harvesting and processing plans.  Not an existential problem, but I did have my mind set on it.  Then came the Snowpocaplyse.  Big whup.  Not even enough to get out the snowblower.

The forecast is still for very cold (for us) weather so I’ll see if I can work in well-below-zero wind chills.  My old Minnesota home town has wind chills of minus-60 so this isn’t all that bad in the cosmic scheme of things.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE

The monster snowfall never materialized, but the gradual deposits from the storm front wound up to be about three inches of snow, followed by three inches of sleet, all encased in a saturating half inch of freezing rain.  Even my 13hp snowblower choked on that combo.  We spent yesterday hacking out two of the vehicles and will spend today and tomorrow working on our long driveway.  It’s like clearing demolition rubble as I first have to break everything up then shovel it out of the way.