Tuesday, September 6

Daily Farm Photo: 9/6/05


The Hay Is In, So Now It's Firewood Season

6 comments:

  1. surely that's much worse!
    nice pile you have there by the way ;)

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  2. I love fires in the winter. There's nothing like the cozy feeling of snuggling up near one. Thanks for the reminder. :)

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  3. Firewood season here too. Adam has been out cutting and gathering.

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  4. Shakthi: Your post made me laugh!

    Ugh, "Missourah" is about as bad as "warsh" instead of wash!

    *lol*

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  5. Hi Clare,
    Hmmmm. I never actually compared putting up hay with putting up firewood. The thing about hay is that it's usually just a once a year event (except this year when we put it up twice), whereas firewood season lasts for months. On the other hand, we reap the benefits from the firewood, as opposed to the sheep reaping all the benefits from the hay!

    Plus the weather is much, much cooler. Sometimes a little too cool: cutting firewood in the snow is not a whole lot of fun. Adds a few extra steps to the process, too, like first sweeping all the snow off fallen trees (which we prefer over standing trees) with a broom! : )

    Hi Amy,
    Well, I guess on the bright side, your mom has a good firewood supply now. As far as the wood in this photo, I can take no credit. Okay, I did pick it up off the ground and load it into the truck when it was originally cut, but that artfully stacked pile of pine is all Joe's handiwork. I am (and he will be the first to agree) a lousy stacker.

    The thing is, the picture is probably a little misleading. That's actually just a corner stack (I'm sure there's a technical term for it). You build one on one side of where your wood is going to go, and then you build another one on the other side. They act like bookends, helping to hold all the neatly stacked firewood between them in place. We have two spots for firewood and the corner stacks are each about 15 feet apart and about 4 or 5 feet high. Joe takes his time constructing them, carefully choosing each piece of wood that he uses and then placing it just right. Unless I am extremely desperate, I NEVER dismantle those corner stacks (even though he says I can.)

    Years ago, when I first saw his smart stacks of firewood, I told him Martha Stewart would be proud, as an entire article about creatively stacking wood had just appeared in her magazine. He had no idea who she was. (Now half the time he reads the current issue before I do, but don't you dare tell him I told you. : )

    The thing is, all we have right now as far as our firewood goes are two corner stacks--with nothing in the middle!

    Hi Cara,
    Oh you can do plenty on 5 acres. I bet you had lots of fun!

    Hi Kristi,
    I agree completely--there is nothing like wood heat. As a 75 year-old farm lady explained to me when I first moved to Missouri: wood heat warms you all the way to the bone. And she was right.

    The other advantage (or joke) about firewood is that it actually heats you up three times: once when you cut it, once when you stack it, and once when you burn it. I think the number is even higher. I figured out once that each piece of wood we burn is often handled six times between forest and stove. I also made the mistake of weighing an armload of wood and calculating how much I lifted in an average day. Six hundred pounds of wood! No visits to the gym for me! : )

    Hi Leigh,
    That must mean he's feeling a lot better. Great news! : )

    Hi Shakthi,
    There are quite a few Amish communities in this area. There is also a large Mennonite community very close by.

    Hi Cherrybegonia,
    I'm so used to hearing "Missourah" I don't even notice it anymore. I still say "Missouri," but I have been busted saying "y'all" once or twice. : )

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  6. do people near you say y'all? from what i understand it marks you, linguistically, as an outsider- y'all is southern. missouri natives can be 'pegged' by the use of 'you-uns'.

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