Tuesday, January 15, 2019
Calgon, take me away...
And now that we are offically into winter (apparently December was the practice room) there is, for all us fuel burners, the new and endless worry, of 'what if..."
Last year in March I looked up from the last stack of wood and realized that it was the omg last stack. With March barely begun, and April rubbing its hands together and snickering evilly, I began to regret giving up on stacking that last two rows the previous fall. There are, to be honest, several pieces of old but not antique furniture in the attic, big wobbly monstrosities just begging to be turned into firewood. Yessah.
Instead, we started loading up the Bobcat bucket with damp cold wet and I do mean wet wood, chipped out of the frozen snowy wood pile outside. He would drop it on the shed floor, and I'd drag it in, one armload at a time, to dry beside the stove or even IN it (what a friend of mine calls 'kiln dried wood'), trying to balance that with what was left of the nice dry stuff. Call it a learning experience.
Since our wood usage usually covers all of May and some of June (global warming where ARE you, dear), this year I thought I'd try to reverse the process. This was an amazingly rainy summer, the wood barely dried at all, and I was forced into stacking wood that was less than as dry as it should be (I'd have fired me on the spot, if I had caught me doing that), And by mid October it was obvious dry wood was not going to be an option. So. We did the 'early in March' thing, threw it all in, dry or not, and stacked it. Took all of October and November to use it, since it was never truly dry, and kiln-dried took on new meaning. Trouble is, the wood behind it has picked up a lot of that dampness, and there are damp mildewy patches on THAT. It is now mid-January, and we have two fierce months ahead of us. At least.
I did the math on "what would have happened if..." and realize that right now, right now, we would be three rows closer to the far wall, and two rows away from no more wood inside.
A little tickly voice keeps saying, yes but, you DO have that nice wet wood outside, so you aren't out of wood, right?
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Oh my, that is a lot of work. I love the thought of burning wood in a fireplace but wouldn’t want to go through all that.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter has a wood stove and never thinks ahead. My Retired Man and I have stopped at stands along the road that are selling left-over split wood that is cheap, and load it in our car and then drop it off at her house. She is always grateful and apparently is under the impression that it is free.
It was our only option when we moved in here, and we have learned over the years what works (mostly us) and what doesn't.
DeleteWhat is nice, is coming in from outside and being goddamned enveloped in the heat, like a huge thermal blanket.
We also have three stoves, and by this time of the year all of them are running. As as we, lol.
When I was a kid my dad had a blueberry business, and even though the berries had a productive period of about four weeks in August, the rest of the year was utilized for clearing/burning land, for cutting brush, building brush piles, and getting ready for next year.
Burning wood is not unlike that, although the rewards are quite different. We do buy about half of our wood, sometimes more, from wood guys, and part of the entertainment of all of this is figuring out how much we really did use, how much is left, and how much we probably will need.
It's a pretty much year round deal, obviously. However, if I didn't have that as my winter exercise...
(I would be slightly suspicious of anyone selling "left over" split wood as perhaps selling diseased wood that no one will buy...there are some nasty insects out there (including ash borers) that are almost impossible to spot until the tree falls over, and by then, of course, it's too late.)