During our 17 years as urbanites,
…very little brain power went to the topic of wood. We made a single attempt to use a fireplace for our first Christmas in Portland, Oregon. Our 16-month-old twins were giddy about a tree inside the house with sparkly lights and pretty glass things all over it. Warmth from the fireplace to add holiday spirit was squashed when the billowing smoke was so thick, my husband took the twins downstairs while I hoisted the oh-so-persistent Duraflame log with grilling tongs into a turkey roaster and out to the patio.
In our 8th year of this rural experiment,
- removing wind-blown limbs from the lake and woodland trails,
- sawing fallen ash, pine and maple trees,
- hauling logs out of the woods,
- stacking it inside and out,
- heating with a fireplace furnace
… means that wood rules our life. Or maybe Wood Rules: Our Life.
With single-digit temperatures during an upper mid-west winter, we cherish a good supply of firewood for our wood-burning insert that can heat the whole house.
We had to learn the rules:
- The gold standard is 16-inch logs of hardwood varieties that have dried for at least 6 months.
- Never split green wood (really sore shoulders after that lesson!)
- “Locals typically do this in June,” was the advice gently delivered by my first wood hauler as I stared at the mountain of wood on my driveway on a snowy morning in our first rural December.
We never seem to have time in June, so settled on November – January for firewood. When our first wood hauler retired, the new supplier brought us pine logs with some oak scraps from an Amish saw mill, generally odd cuts and oversized logs.
Now we get why locals start in June!
… with the acquisition of chainsaw #6, we galvanized our commitment to a DYI effort of sawing, hauling and splitting our own ash and pine firewood from our 7-acre forest.
After a 75-foot pine nearly hit the house, splitting 2-foot diameter beastly logs with our “wedge and sledge hammer” method was futile. A friend saw our motley tool collection and lent us a wood splitter, 490 pounds of mechanical relief. We split and stacked about 4 face cords of firewood for this winter.
We look at wood differently after spending so much time with it.
What we now “see” is other benefits of all this wood. A linden tree last summer gave us a dozen 10-foot planks for future shelving. Our river neighbor to the east removed towering maple from the river bank. We got three slices of a branch of this giant for table tops. The largest slice has 96 growth rings. The stump is 46 inches in diameter.
Photos by S.A.M. and Bob Steiner, Spring 2022
