Saturday, October 4, 2014

Wood is Good. Wood is Warm. Wood is Happiness.

Autumn is officially upon us, and here in New England, the temperatures are getting cooler. This past winter was our first since relocating from the south, and there were certainly some learning curves we had to navigate. The biggest, for me at least, was learning how to stay warm without jacking the thermostat to 80 degrees. As a housewife, I am home all day long, and to heat a house in the winter, in the north, all day and night........well you might as well start burning paper money for heat. Oil heating and its cost is quite pricy. With keeping the thermostat at about 74 for the first few months of cool weather, we went through an insane amount of oil. (For all of you unfamiliar with the crap-tastic heating ways of the North.......some brilliant person decided burning oil to heat your home was THE way to go.......can you say "sticker shock?!?) After seeing how quickly we had to refill our 275 gallon oil tank (which costs roughly the same as gasoline, per gallon, BTW), I knew I had to find a different way of keeping the house heated. 

I very quickly learned the value of keeping a fire roaring in the fireplace all day. 


The upside to this practice - you have a lovely crackling fire, you get warmth without using an ungodly amount of oil in your furnace, and you have the deep, smokey, childhood smell of happiness that burning wood produces. The downside - you have to keep tending to the fire on a regular basis, you have to haul heavy logs, and you go through a massive of wood.

**As a side note: a wood-burning stove is a much more efficient method of heating, and we are hoping to get one this year, but that is another story.**

On our property, we have stacks upon stacks of cut logs. They were here when we purchased our home. Because of those stacks, we did not see any need to buy wood before winter overtook us last year. What we did not account for, however, was how much precipitation we would get. By mid-winter, the stacks of wood were buried under layers of snow and ice. We couldn't see the stacks, let alone break through the giant, ice-filled snowdrifts to get to most of them. The few we were able to locate, break apart, and then lug back to the house were so wet and decayed that they were of very little use. They either smoldered or burned far to fast. Eventually, we had to bite the bullet and have some wood delivered.

We found several vendors that would have delivered firewood to our home, but one of them stood out. The wood they sold was slightly more expensive per cord than some of the others, but a much better quality. It was guaranteed hardwood, seasoned a minimum of 2 years, de-barked and tumbled (yielding less mess to deal with, and a more efficient, even burn), and the charge included delivery. Plus, they were able to get the wood shipped to us very quickly, which was great since the weather was biting and unpredictable!

We ordered the minimum required - 2 cords. I was expecting a good amount, but when truck dumped the wood in our requested location, I was shocked. The pile was huge. It was wide and tall and deep. I could barely see over it, Bella could do laps around it, and John couldn't even park in his garage space until we were able to get most of it out of the way stacked! 


 It took us close to a full day-and-a-half to get the logs stacked. When it was all said and done, we ended up with closer to 2.5 cords, which was a really nice surprise. Also, rather than throwing away up all the slivers of wood and chunks of bark, I gathered them up in a large 5-gallon bucket. I then used paper raffia to bind the pieces into small bundles to use as wood-starters. Because the wood was smaller and had lots of thin edges, they caught fire very quickly. The bigger chunks of wood I put more towards the center of the bundles so they would burn longer, allowing enough time to catch big logs on fire. They worked really well, and it was nice to put all the parts of the woodpile to use.


The wood we purchased burnt so efficiently, that even finishing out the remainder of last year's winter barely made a dent in the pile. This autumn, we have already started having fires burning again (in fact, I'm sitting by the fireplace right now, typing by it's glorious flickering). The wood has stayed beautiful, and I am still so thankful we made the investment last year.

If you have been watching the weather signs, you will probably agree with me that this year is looking to be a bad winter again. Don't get blind-sided by not being prepared enough. Move your wood supply close to your house, cover it, and make sure you have enough to get you through even a very long winter. And, if you need to purchase wood, I would suggest doing it now - just in case stock gets low or prices raise at the stores. Better safe - AND WARM - than sorry!




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