Romanticism is Dead
To burn or not to burn, that is the question. Or, to be warm or to not be warm. No, I'm not talking about summer temperatures, but of winter comfort. When one's acquisitive possibilities are limited, and no way are you about to install a heating system where you have to spend two months' worth of salary just to keep the house minimally warm during nine months, then you have to do some physical work.
Generally, that physical work falls to my husband. He's the one who takes the tractor and the chainsaw, and brings home the logs. We almost celebrate a windstorm here, because that means work has been simplified by nature downing the dry and diseased trees. This not being the pioneer west, however, and my husband not being the Ingalls' Pa, not every tree is an available tree, downed or not. Generally, my mother-in-law tells us to go cut on her land, since I just have one small lot for firewood. Or, we have to buy some logs.
The logs then have to be cut into smaller pieces. Clear spring evenings, when the days are growing longer, finds my husband in the lot in front, chainsaw whining and crying its way through the logs, which get thrown onto a growing pile. Until a few years ago, that pile would then be decimated by hand, with the ax, every evening after work. But then my husband wised up, and decided it was worth the small price of a rental fee to be able to rest after a long day's work.
Now, we rent a wood chopper. Every year, between June and July, we ask for it over a weekend, and set it up next to the pile of cut up logs. Then, we get up in the semi-darkness of six in the morning to spend all day Saturday and sometimes a part of Sunday, watching blocks come and go. The women are generally at the helm, operating the chopper's blade, while my husband and one of his brothers move the wood from one pile to another, passing through a slimming session at the chopper.
It's not exactly boring, but it is intense. You have to watch the chopper, watch the blocks of wood, and watch any hands in the area. And you have to be fast to try to finish the pile in the weekend. Forward, back. Forward, forward, back. Back, back, forward, back, forward. All the time, the stiff handle makes a callous in the palm of your hand as it rubs against the same muscle continuously. At rest periods, you feel like your whole body creaks. You've been moving only your arm and your hand the entire time.
Slowly, one pile descends and another ascends. Now, it has to dry in the summer sun (whenever it decides to return) and then it has to be carted in the tractor to the barn, where it gets stacked. I tried my hand at stacking once, and the part that I stacked came promptly down. Thankfully, no cat was injured in the process, just one of my ankles. Now, I just throw it in the tractor to take it inside.
For those who dream of romantic winter evenings by a roaring fireplace, or a warm woodstove with the metal clang of opening the little door to feed firewood to the hungry fire, the reality is incomplete. It really is true that firewood warms you three times; once when you collect it, once when you make it, and once when you burn it. Sometimes the romanticism is so overwhelming, I just wish I were rich enough to just hit a switch and have a boringly warm house.
Generally, that physical work falls to my husband. He's the one who takes the tractor and the chainsaw, and brings home the logs. We almost celebrate a windstorm here, because that means work has been simplified by nature downing the dry and diseased trees. This not being the pioneer west, however, and my husband not being the Ingalls' Pa, not every tree is an available tree, downed or not. Generally, my mother-in-law tells us to go cut on her land, since I just have one small lot for firewood. Or, we have to buy some logs.
The logs then have to be cut into smaller pieces. Clear spring evenings, when the days are growing longer, finds my husband in the lot in front, chainsaw whining and crying its way through the logs, which get thrown onto a growing pile. Until a few years ago, that pile would then be decimated by hand, with the ax, every evening after work. But then my husband wised up, and decided it was worth the small price of a rental fee to be able to rest after a long day's work.
Now, we rent a wood chopper. Every year, between June and July, we ask for it over a weekend, and set it up next to the pile of cut up logs. Then, we get up in the semi-darkness of six in the morning to spend all day Saturday and sometimes a part of Sunday, watching blocks come and go. The women are generally at the helm, operating the chopper's blade, while my husband and one of his brothers move the wood from one pile to another, passing through a slimming session at the chopper.
It's not exactly boring, but it is intense. You have to watch the chopper, watch the blocks of wood, and watch any hands in the area. And you have to be fast to try to finish the pile in the weekend. Forward, back. Forward, forward, back. Back, back, forward, back, forward. All the time, the stiff handle makes a callous in the palm of your hand as it rubs against the same muscle continuously. At rest periods, you feel like your whole body creaks. You've been moving only your arm and your hand the entire time.
Slowly, one pile descends and another ascends. Now, it has to dry in the summer sun (whenever it decides to return) and then it has to be carted in the tractor to the barn, where it gets stacked. I tried my hand at stacking once, and the part that I stacked came promptly down. Thankfully, no cat was injured in the process, just one of my ankles. Now, I just throw it in the tractor to take it inside.
For those who dream of romantic winter evenings by a roaring fireplace, or a warm woodstove with the metal clang of opening the little door to feed firewood to the hungry fire, the reality is incomplete. It really is true that firewood warms you three times; once when you collect it, once when you make it, and once when you burn it. Sometimes the romanticism is so overwhelming, I just wish I were rich enough to just hit a switch and have a boringly warm house.
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