Readying For Winter (blog back on track?)

After a couple solid weeks of working my way through the pile of cut and drying bolts of wood, splitting hauling and stacking them to various location on the homestead, I note that winter now has my permission to descend on us.  I’ve got about 1-1/2-to two winters worth of firewood ready for burning, with another two-plus years’ worth felled and on the ground up on the mountain above the barn.  I’ll start cutting and hauling that next month to begin drying on pallets until I get around to splitting that too.

The “window” in the firewood crib was left open so Mrs. Barn could view her flower garden while rocking on the front porch. That void will be filled this week.

Being a southern California gal and enthusiastic gardener to boot, Mrs. Barn is singing the blues about the upcoming season.  Given the work done last year to the cabin it is MUCH tighter than in previous years, and she even was heard to utter comments that it was too warm in the cabin at times last winter.  Truthfully, I think the dearth of daylight is more distressing to her than the cold.  Time to get out the happy light from the closet.  And maybe revisit the subject of building her a greenhouse.

I am totally prepared for heating the shop, too, with far more firewood and bags of coal than ever before.  Since taking this picture I re-stacked the firewood to move it back a few more feet from the stove, and added a loose-stack wall of concrete blocks to serve as an additional safety feature between the stove and the wood.

Now all that’s left is to winterize the yard equipment and finish assembling the “Tim the Tool Man Taylor-worthy” snowblower I bought to clear the driveway since our plowing guy retired.

Then the really chilly weather can start.  We might be in Ol’ Virginny, but we have had at least a couple of sub-zero nights every winter.  Last year was pretty mild, but this being 2020 I can only imagine what the coming winter will be like.

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I think I am back on track blogging-wise, more or less.  I still do not have Photoshop up and running but found a good work-around for simple photo editing with Corel Photo-Paint, CorelDraw being my preferred vector graphics tool.  I can’t do anything really complex with Photo-Paint, but I can crop and re-size which is all I need 99% of the time.

There are still a couple of minor hiccups with WordPress but for now I can keep moving forward.  Thus I expect to resume posting three or four times a week for the foreseeable future.

Wish me luck.