The first year we had a bunch of dried wood left over from the previous owner. That gave us a good head start, plus the original wood stove was small and didn't require much wood. It also produced very little heat. The second year we decided to invest in a bigger stove, which of course, required a lot more wood. Poor Karlo spent endless evenings and weekends from the Summer all the way through to the Winter harvesting and chopping wood to prepare for the burning season.
By the third year we decided that it was just far too much work and his time was worth more than the price of buying the wood. That was easy, just get it delivered. All we needed to do that year was stack the perfectly sized pieces of wood in the shed. [Side note: All that stacking of dusty wood gave me an instant sinus infection that lasted for 3 weeks of misery so I paid for that wood in more ways than one.]
The fourth year rolls around and we didn't think twice about ordering more wood, only this time we had to order more cords than the previous year and the extra $1,000 expense came right around the same time as the shed roof repair, the new generator purchase, the new snow blower purchase, the repair bill on the ATV, and one of our vacations. Needless to say the extra grand hurt. So I stood on the deck one day, gazing out at all of our millions of trees and made a comment to Karlo about getting his chainsaw out and taking down some trees to save us money next year. Within two hours of my comment there were a dozen trees down. He wasted no time jumping to action.
And the work has not stopped since. It has been an endless project of cutting and chopping and hauling and stacking all that wood from the backyard to the shed. Now, suddenly, it's all coming back to me . . . the reasons why we decided against Karlo doing all this work. It's funny how you can forget all this in just one short year. sigh. So now I feel guilty because it's my fault he's back in this mess. A couple of weeks ago I decided I wanted to try to help out. I thought maybe I could split some wood too. I walked outside and watched closely as Karlo chopped away.
It actually started to look like fun. I wanted to try it too. Karlo told me, "Give it all you got and don't miss the target." That sounded easy enough. Well, here is the result of my efforts. Not only did I nearly miss the target, but 'everything I had' only sunk the axe into the wood a half an inch. Good grief. Chopping wood is apparently not for me. I better stick to hauling and stacking. Lord knows I'm getting pretty good at that.
2 comments:
I can't believe that post-back surgery Karlo is splitting wood by hand. BUY A FREAKIN WOOD SPLITTER!!!
He has already split AT LEAST 3 cords of wood by hand . . . and he's not done yet. Oh, and then there's the hauling and stacking. I'll take a picture of our shed soon. His doctor would freak out!
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