gigamatic

Last night, I drove to the West Siiiide to help Max go pick up some firewood. Turns out there's a farm store a few blocks from him, and they sell firewood by the 1/4 cord ($40). Now, that sounds like a ton of wood, but looking at it, it's really not. We loaded the truck in < 10 minutes, and that included the time to go in and pay. Once we got back to the Power Estate, it took us even less time to unload and stack at the back of his carport. It smelled wonderful, and I hope it burns just as well.

Now, while I was loading and unloading, I was recounting stories on how my family heated exclusively with wood till I was in high school, at least. "One of those pellet stoves?" someone asked me. "Fuck that, we had two woodburning stoves."

I grew up in a farmhouse, and I remember when we moved in, there was a crappy coal furnace in the basement. It heated for shit, and my dad gave up and bought a barrel wood stove. The wood stove was basically a barrel on its side with a rack on top for heating/cooking stuff and a stovepipe at one end and a door for loading/cleaning on the other. Inefficient, and not great to cook on when the power went out (which was often.) And, as I recall, a bitch to clean.

Then, not long after, we bought a second stove, which they still use today. This one was in a square box, with a removable top, which had access to two flat "burners", and a grille on the front to keep children from touching the actual stove and burning their fingers off. It had two separate doors -- one for cleaning and one for adding wood. Much better. And, thanks to a vent, it had better air flow, and even had a place for adding a blower if you wanted to actually turn it into a furnace.

Now, I was telling Max that we exclusively heated with wood. OH MY GOD did I think that sucked when I was a kid. I mean, you spent all summer cutting, splitting and stacking wood, and then all winter splitting and carrying wood. It was a never ending cycle. We had a method to it. We had special wood racks just outside the front door, which, once every few days, would have to be filled.

Now, what's amazing to me now is the amount of wood we went through in a given season (and I know it was less every year). If that was a quarter cord that we moved last night, that's about what we would go through in 4 days. Multiplied out, that's 2 cord in a month. Say you've got 5 months of winter -- 10 cords of firewood. I estimated last night that we had about 12 cord in the woodshed every year, and 3-6 cord in another shed.

I never once realized how much wood that was. And, much as I hated it then, I think I miss it a little. Splitting wood is therapeutic (ax and sledge hammer wielding, anyone?) but I'll tell ya, it's hard work. And I do not miss sweating through 4 layers of clothes and a toboggan in below-freezing temps just to gather wood to heat the house.