Firewood Season

Here’s a glimpse of a recent fortnight in Shangri-la.

As is often the case my brother and his wife come for a visit, now extended from one week to two weeks since they are now both retired.  I guess that is a commentary of sorts, with my siblings and I all retired including the baby.  We are fortunate in that all five of us get along famously and maintain a steady text thread keeping us up to date with each other.  The thread activity really ramped up when our Mom was in her final decline a few years ago and it never stopped.

Anyhow, you might remember the post a few months ago about trolling for firewood on the homestead, with a special emphasis on existing windfall waiting to be harvested.  Of particular interest this week was the cluster of storm damaged locust trees up at the top of the hill, with several large trees down and tossed about.  FYI locust is a highly prized firewood, very BTU dense with a hot burning temp and less ash than other woods.  When we got down to it, we realized that in addition to the already-dead trees there were at least a half dozen still-standing (but probably not for long) locusts that could/should come down.

So down they came.  It took some forethought as the trunks were intertwined and needed to come apart in a particular order.  My brother is really good at that work.  By the time we finished the week there were four heaping trucksful of sawn and split firewood to stack up at the barn.

At this point I am well into the firewood inventory for Winter 2026/2027, but I still have a lot of windfall to harvest.  By my guess it will be about ten truck loads, so all is good.  I will work on those truckloads in between other stuff over the winter.  It’s gonna be crazy with grandson #4 due probably next week.