Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Well that went quickly

The day before the Almost'a Ice Storm, I hauled a pallet full of firewood up nearer the house.  I also had a pretty sizable pile right on the porch. But as time wore on, as the snow & ice relented and the temperatures refused to budge beyond 32 degrees, the pallet was getting lighter and lighter.

Yesterday morning, I uncovered the pilfered pile and found only this:
I swear that pile was like 5' tall !! 
And that was gone before sunset so I wheeled my barrow down the hill to the "big" pile of firewood and wheeled it, full, back to the house where it now sits next to the porch.  Our daytime temperatures have been in the upper 50's since yesterday and we're supposed to get up to 65 on Friday so I suspect that the wheelbarrow will last until at least tomorrow.  At which point I'll be barrowing my butt back down to get more firewood.

It was interesting to see exactly how much wood we went through those cold eleven days.  The wood was stacked about 4' high on the pallet so I guess I could measure the pallet and figure out how much of a cord we used.  But even if I knew how much we went through in eleven days, those were really, really cold days for us here so it's not like I can simply extrapolate the days of winter / known wood used and figure out what we'd need for an entire year.  The wood pile is pretty impressive (not Mama Pea Wood Pile impressive, mind you) so I'm sure we have enough for the year, and there are still tons (literally) of logs that need sawed up and rounds that need split.  

I guess my exercise routine is going to be wheel barrowing and splitting.  Beats feeling like a hamster on the treadmill I suppose.

Paul's Take
If ONLY she's get her butt on the wood splitter.  I'm the one dozing trees, limbing them, sawing them, splitting them and stacking the wood.  I buy that expensive contraption so she doesn't have to split logs by hand and she still refuses to spend more than a half hour on that thing.  And you can even sit down and do it!

8 comments:

  1. You think YOU'VE been going through a lot of wood lately! HA! Not only have we had a LOT of snow early this winter (yay!), but frigid temps have come visiting early, too. I can kinda judge how much wood we've been putting through the two stoves in the house by how often I need to clean out the ashes. (Answer: Too dang frequently!) But I will have to quit complaining about pushing wheelbarrows of wood from the wood shed to the house. No hills to struggle up. It's all a flat run at our house. (Thank goodness.)

    When can I come and split wood with you? I love splitting wood with a wood splitter. ('Tis not too bad doing it by hand either. Kinda makes me feel like I'm Wonder Woman. Or Superman. Or maybe just Arnold Schwarzenegger.)

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  2. I burn a lot of wood and my number one rule is that the wood is stacked up hill or at least level with the house. Pushing a loaded wheelbarrow up hill is not a good thing it will wear you out. It sure doesn't take long to burn a pile of wood. I have been burning about a wheelbarrow load every day.

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  3. Prolly chucked through a good cord and half or more this year so far. I would say about double my usual rate for this time of year.

    No end in sight for it yet either.

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  4. Got wood a plenty and my hubby bless his heart brings it to the porch where I march it to the stove pile. Thank God for that...again mine is down hill too! Again God I am thankful!.....

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  5. We go through around 6-8 cord a winter heating the house. The thing I learned the first year was to quit splitting the wood into small pieces. LEave them suckers as big as you can. The first year I got to borrow a friend's hydraulic splitter, and Teh Spawn and I went to town without hubby's supervision. We split every darned log into fours whether is needed it or not. That stuff burned up so fast. Not I leave as many logs whole as I can and just split the bigger ones in half. They last so much longer.

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  6. It's supposed to warm up this weekend Paul. Get-er out splitten this weekend :)

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  7. We have a pellet stove, and have already gone through a THIRD of our winter supply... Hopefully this warm front lets us slow down on the heat a little bit... But at least we don't have to split wood!

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  8. Back when we burned wood for heat exclusively, we figured 4 cord per year.

    A log splitter! Lucky girl! They are sort of scary though. My 4 cord was purchased ready to burn......

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