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 out again.

The snow dumps off the roof in back and fills up the cutaway area behind the house, as you can deduce by looking at the first picture above. It gets pretty full by late winter. in fact, last year I had to get up on top of the little roof next to where I’m putting my hands in this shot, and shovel roof snow off of it. So in the wintertime I have to go out every evening and get firewood. Since the back of the house is piled up with snow, this involves slipping and sliding on the path behind the house, getting beyond the back corner there, where the porch light does not reach, filling the tote by feel (since I can’t see and we’re sadly lacking in streetlights), and stumbling back along the snowy path to the house.

So here’s my remedy:

I built a little wood shed onto the back porch. This is actually where the garbage cans resided last year; but last Saturday I extended the shed area and put a little roof on it, for the garbage cans and recycle bin to live in. Then Emma and I approximately a week’s worth of firewood where the garbage used to live. Every Saturday, during the day, I’ll trundle back and forth from the wood shed at the side of the house to fill the little one at the bck of the house. That way on the dark winter nights I only have to fill the woodbox from the back porch—or have the kids do it.

We’ll see how it works when the snow starts to fly.