We have an insane amount of wood. The covered row of split wood in the photo above is the first of twelve. That first row is sporting a “Wood Hood,” a cover designed and produced by my brother, John. There’s three rows of unspilt oak in front of those. Some came from our friend Kathy, some from Wisner Road and the rest from Jeddy’s tree down the street. And a few hours ago we were offered more wood from our neighbor, Phil. He hired Jeddy’s tree surgeon, Woodchuck, to raise his canopy. We’ll wait for cold weather before splitting the pile.
It seemed everybody burned wood when we first moved here. I wish I could say they all wanted to switch to cleaner energy but the fact is they all got too old. They switched their wood burning fireplaces to gas and in one case took the wood stove out. And Leo, whose Heathkit hydraulic splitter we inherited, died.
We learned all we know from Leo. How to roll the big logs up a plank and into our car. How to split the awkward ones. How to stack. We like the whole ritual and we’re looking forward to sitting by the fire this winter. Which reminds me. I’ve got to get up and clean the chimney before the season starts.
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The first thing we did after buying our houseboat was take out the wood-burning fireplace. 😷