Musings

That Time Of Year

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For the next few weeks I will be spending  portions of my time getting ready for our near arctic winters.  That means cutting firewood literally by the ton.

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The other day my pal Bob came by to spend an hour or two getting trees down on the ground.  Bob has many skill sets in life and one of them emerged from his years as a timberman in his youth.  Together we got about a dozen trees down, most of them dead or dying locust trees whose firewood I prize.  When I say “we” I mean Bob, with me mostly just standing out the the way.  I am not yet confident in my ability to get a large tree down safely every time, and for Bob it is just second nature.  Once they are on the ground I have no trouble chopping them up with my slightly smaller chain saw.

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To the southwest of the barn I am trying to thin the trees in order to get better winter sun.  Given the stand of trees there now I lose the sun by about 3PM in December and January, so If I can move the tree line back a hundred yards it should get better.  But that is another five or ten years worth of firewood.

So over the next month I will be closing out the days with at least a couple of hours of chopping, splitting, and stacking firewood until I have garnered about 25 cubic yards to augment our half-winter’s worth of firewood left over from last year.

Stay tuned.