Exactly a year ago this week we got up to a large sugar maple that had fallen during a snowstorm and I bucked and split the good wood, and together Sweetheart piled it up with me. Allowed it to season a year.
It's in a region we call "the swamp" which is really a wet spot behind Faraway Cottage. Those who have visited here know this cottage and exactly where it is. For all others, it's just a cottage I built ten years ago with my young son and behind it gets wet, sometimes very wet, and then there are dry periods where we can cross any part of it and never think much of water. It's mossy then. When we cut the tree it was half and half so we had to watch were we stepped.
A year later we are carrying the seasoned firewood home and putting it right into the woodstoves.
We used to sled firewood out of the woods with a toboggan and a malamute dog by the name of Jack. Jack was a good ol' boy. Buried now and I can show you the stone.
Sometimes we'll wheelbarrow out firewood if we can get to it. Other times we have used canvas sacks. For some reason this month we're content just using our arms and coming home with wood.
It's been unusually warm between 11AM-2PM and this has been a good time to carry wood. Lots of it. The two of us talking while we hike up and talking as we hike back. Breaking down a better trail out around the cottage and beside the small farm pond and down along the flower beds and gardens and into the woodshed.
No fuel cost. Great sunshine. The chickadees following us in and back out and back in because they know we're the very same ones who feed them.
photo © bob arnold
