firewood

Wow. This past weekend was a weekend of hard work! We had a driveway full of edgewood/slabwood to take care of. The wood came from a local sawmill. The sawmill was simply going to burn the wood, so we determined that purchasing it for 25/bundle was a great price and that if it was going to be burned anyway, then we might as well use it for heat!

First, Jonathan built this crib to safely cut the long slabs of wood . We would put the individual slabs into this crib and then he would take his chainsaw to it. We would also then have the wood in the appropriate size for our fireplace. I believe the wood was cut into approximately 16 inch lengths.

You can see Jonathan cutting through the wood (and a top piece falling). Each "crib full" equals about 3-4 wheelbarrows of stackable wood.

We put all of the pieces into wheelbarrows and moved them to the back yard and stacked them neatly into racks that Jonathan and some friends had built. These racks are about 2 feet wide, 6 feet tall, and 12 feet long. Each rack hold approximately 25 wheelbarrows of wood. There are 4 racks full of wood for the winter!

I am still very sore. We worked for about 12-14 hours on each Saturday and Sunday. There were times that it seemed too daunting. I remember stepping outside and thinking that we would never get it done. However, we succeeded! It was a lot of work. The kids helped watch Gavin and stack wood (alternating). There were also a few time out soccer games between all 4 kids. I think that Gavin even got a goal or two!

Jonathan cut the wood, and I carefully stacked it into the wheelbarrow and moved the wheelbarrows into the back where then we stacked the wood. I was very careful to use my legs. I have not been this sore since the last marathon I ran! Then again, I wasn't nearly 9 months pregnant when I ran a marathon! It certainly feels great to have all of this wood taken care of, and to know that we have enough to heat our house for hte long winter ahead.

While we were cutting and moving the wood, Jonathan told me of a farm that he worked on in northern MN. This farm was very far north - where winter can set in starting in Sept. The family would have all of their wood and food saved for the winter by the start of September. There would be many days when they would have over 10 feet of snow and be unable to get out. It was amazing to me that people still do this, of course there it is a necessity, here it is becuase we want to be as independent from oil/gas as we can.

Okay - now to catch up on wash!