Here’s half of next year’s heat. It’s 60 feet long, 4.5 feet high (average), and 15″ deep or so, and that pencils out to 2.5 cord, or about half of what I’ll need next winter. It looks like a lot of wood, but last year we started burning in September and we burned a long …

Last week I brought my chain saw out of hibernation and walked around downhill of the house, snipping off sundry little dead trees to tidy up the property. I worked my way down the trail to the garden, and then I found myself looking up at this tree.
It’s a lodgepole pine, 70 feet tall and …

Well, it’s the 2nd week of March and I’ve burned less than four cords of wood since the season began last October. The cost to me? Oh, a lot of entertainment last summer with chain saw and maul. The thrill of assembling the most Dr. Seussian wood shed in the county. The delight of a …

Warning: this is a messy procedure. Learn from my woes and surround your interior chimney with an old sheet before proceeding.
Well, since we never actually had winter around here I’ll detail this procedure and post the pictures from when I cleaned the chimbley around Christmas time. The principles are still relevant and I’ll do this …

I estimate January 15 to be halfway through the burning season, which ends, by exactly the same precise calculation, on May 1.
Here’s our winter heat supply as of the first week of the new year. I’ve used up just over two rows of the seven rows in the wood sheds. Here you see the cross …

When I was in the eighth grade or so, we read a short story by Jack London called “To Build A Fire” about a dude freezing to death in Alaska. While my circumstances are not quite as dire, I too have had to learn some things about building a fire.
Fire needs fuel, air, and heat. …

These trees grew on our mountainside in the sunshine and rain during their dozen years of life. They were brought down by weather or a chain saw, coming though the quiet woods to thin out the stands of weak timber to let sunshine reach the ground again. Their branches and sawdust went back into the …

I came in the other day from a chilly evening outdoors and thought, well, summer’s over. I’m building a fire. And I did.
I love heating our home with wood. I love every aspect of it (some more than others). I love dropping a dead tree in the forest and blocking it up in bright rounds …

My second-favorite thing about winter is getting firewood in the dark. (About a dozen things contend for the coveted spot of Favorite Thing About Winter, and they alternate depending on the day.) In the wintertime when I get home I always come in, drop off my Spiderman lunch box, grab the firewood tote, and head …

And here is the new wood shed alongside the old. Together they’re about 50% full. The new woodshed is on the right side of this picture. On Saturday while the kids were hauling wood to the old shed, I was finishing up the new one, complete with tin roofing that’s full o’holes and needs patching. …