In the middle of October we had a warm spell, hovering around 70F for a week. Still, firewood was on my mind. Our friends Kath and Paul joined us in renting a log splitter and doing the work. First we worked at our place, splitting all those old rounds that had been cut last year and were cluttering the side of the driveway. Then we hooked the splitter to my car and drove over to their house, about six miles away, where fresh cut rounds awaited the brute force of the hydraulic monster.
It’s noisy and stinky (gas powered) but oh the gratification when the wedge explodes those knotted ones that no maul work can budge! I had told my mom that we were going to do this and she expressed her envy. My parents helped us two years ago and she remembers the joy of that hard and so all the more satisfying work.
Over here we added about a cord of firewood to our stash.
It’ll dry for over a year while we use up the dry wood that we still have left from that earlier cutting: some of the middle stack and all of the right stack in this picture of warmer times:
All this wood is from our own property, mostly from that massive tree work we had done in 2011. We still have ten or so of those downed logs in the front garden, but now, after a lot of whittling, they’re like mikado (pick-up) sticks and not easy to buck anymore. Maybe, with one good weekend, we’ll get those done too. That wood is getting old and is in the way of other plans.
Last week I split some of that dry wood into smaller pieces and started the stacks in the porch, so they can dry extra before the time for a fire begins We had a couple of cold nights, when the fire in the stove was welcomed for another season.
The yard smells of split wood, the house of apples. Of my 120 lbs of apples only one box (20 lbs) was left and I turned it into more applesauce. The rest has been eaten, sauced, juiced, dehydrated, and some bartered away for hive-over-wintering supplies. And I’m paying my friend, who picked up the tab at the orchard, with eggs, by the way. Gotta love that!
Love that! Eggs are being used this week in Lemon Souffle pancakes, lemon pound cakes for church coffee hour and school lunch snacks, and egg salad. YUM. By the way I have less than half a box of apples left. They are going into lunch boxes, in salads and into oatmeal. Sad they are nearly gone.