The Wood pile

When we moved here in 2018, the previous owner had left a massive pile of wood in the wood shed. We have a wood burning stove in the studio which is in the basement of the house but were too nervous when we moved in to fire it up, which seems kind of funny now.. But we were city folk and not familiar with these things.. Once the Fall hit, we switched on the furnace heating, easy-peasy just like in our Vancouver house, right? Except this furnace is electric, so when that first Hydro Bill came in we nearly hit the floor with shock. It’s a big house, granted, but that bill was huuuge. We were still in touch with the previous owners, who had built the house in 1990 and he gave us a quick overview of the wood stove, and how it heated the bulk of the house.

And there it started… the cycle of resource gathering. The first year was easy really – the wood pile was huge already, we just had to lug it into the studio area to replenish every few weeks – Bingo. 
Now, heading into the 4th winter its all got pretty old hat and I actually love the challenge of sourcing the wood and prepping it…

Here’s the order of things: 

• find wood 

• buck it up 

• haul it near the woodshed 

• split it 

• stack it

• dry it 

• carry it to the inside wood storage 

• burn it

• clean the fireplace 

• rinse (well not rinse coz, ya know) and repeat

Finding the wood to buck up is the hard bit – I don’t want to haul it out of the acre patch of forest we steward, unless it’s fallen in a storm or is looking to be dangerous soon, and even then we try to leave as much as possible to regenerate the forest floor.

But in the countryside you meet people who have wood or will help you get wood, so that’s pretty amazing. I’ve gone from hiring people with chainsaws and renting massive log splitters, to having friends with chainsaws, including my neighbour Richard who taught me how to use one a couple of months ago (I’m a bit addicted to it now), and recently buying an electric log splitter, which is a game-changer! 

Last xmas I got a nice electric pruning saw for my main gift, which is great for anything no bigger than about 4″ in diameter, but I think I know what I’m going to ask Santa for this year and am scouring the internet for a pink chainsaw with sequins, because, you know, you still got to bedazzle even in rural settings (OK, I was kidding, but then I just googled and yes… they exist. Are there no original ideas?)

Anyway, it’s a lot of work getting the place ready for winter – an ongoing task and I’ve learned the hard way that I should really get started on this in April (left it way too late this year) but all the hard work is so worth it.

The heat from the wood burning stove is so warm and toasty and as one fella at my first songwriting workshop said “it warms the bones of the house” which is true.. that forced air heat doesn’t come close. Plus when we have a power outage, which is pretty frequent in the winter, we can boil a kettle or even make a stew on it. 

We’re loving living here and feel very grateful and fortunate to have made the move when we did. Of course there’s been more than wood chopping going on, but the wood chopping is such a great tonic from the busy studio.

So, as we move into the Fall we have a batch of the dry stuff ready to burn from October, and we’re also getting ahead for next year from a large pile up the road where someone needs it gone and we have the tools, energy and equipment to shift it (thanks again to my neighbour Richard!).

We’re still learning lots about living rurally (the mysteries of rural municipal government for one!) and fine-tuning it with every trip around the sun.