Last weekend Rick and I began stacking wood. Since our house is heated with a woodburner, we’ve come to associate a nicely stacked wood pile with security and comfort. So it’s satisfying work.
The woodburner that keeps us warm
We’re like two bears, hunkering down at the end of autumn.
John, our neighbor, once told me, “Wood makes you warm three times. Once when you cut it, once when you stack it, and once when you burn it.”
Winters here are nowhere near as cold as the winters I grew up with in Michigan and Minnesota. There’s no snow in Martinborough.
Even so, these winters are damp and wet and at night the temperatures plummet. Mornings can be frosty. It’s not unusual that we make a fire in the evening and again first thing in the morning, but by noon we’re often opening the doors and windows and eating lunch out on the deck. It’s not a bad winter life, really.
A delivery of wood
We had two cords of wood delivered toward the end of summer, back in February. They dumped it off their truck in a heap out in the top paddock, next to the chook house. The chickens went crazy at the noise.
The wood was supposed to be pine, but we lucked out because afterwards we learned it was macrocarpa. John told us. We didn’t know the difference. John said, “Macrocarpa is better firewood because it burns slower than pine.” Who knew? These are the things that city boys learn when they move to the country.
Much of that wood was too thick to fit in our woodburner. So I went out and bought a proper log splitter, which is different than an axe. The head of a log splitter is heavier, and it has a large square surface on the back for hitting with a wooden mallet. Again, I would have never learned the difference between a log splitter and an axe in my old life.
Rick and I worked together to stack the wood. We loaded our red wheelbarrow full and wheeled it past the chickens, who were again becoming unsettled with every loud clunk of wood landing in the metal wheelbarrow. They’re used to having it quiet out there. We wheeled the load into the hayshed.
The hayshed
I could go on for days about how much I love that hayshed. It’s just corrugated grey tin, a large rectangle of it with a slightly sloping roof. It doesn’t look like a thing most people would find worthy of love. One side is open, with two large fence gates across the opening to keep the cattle out when they’re grazing in the top paddock.
Inside the hayshed you’ll find all kinds of junk. Fantastic things. Mysterious things. Metal pieces of some lost machine. A broken picnic table top, round with a hole in the middle for an umbrella. Across the ground there are remnants of another season’s hay. If you stand inside the hayshed and look out, you have the most magnificent view of the olive grove and the hills beyond.
Stacking the wood
Once we’d pushed the wheelbarrow full of wood into that beloved hayshed, we moved quickly. There was a lot of wood. We lifted and stacked and turned to lift again, lining the wood up against the back wall where it’s most dry. Then we wheeled the empty wheelbarrow back out past the chickens again and over to the wood heap to repeat the whole procedure. The work had a rhythm, and a tempo, like music. The chickens watched us go back and forth. They pecked at the ground.
Satisfying work
The pile slowly grew taller and longer, until it became just taller than my 5 foot 10, and as long as two of me lying down. There is still more wood to stack. I don’t mind. Like I said, it’s satisfying.
We worked that day until it was time to start dinner. Then we both paused and looked at the wood pile. It was at that moment that I realised wood makes you warm much more than simply 3 times. It’s almost infinite.
Because just standing there that day, looking at that wood pile, and again every day that I’ve looked at it since, I have felt warm.
Again and again and again.
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Read the next post: The quest for blue eggs
Or read other posts about the woodburner.
“wood makes you warm three times…” great!
I wish my wood stacking this year had been as neat as yours. The last row of wood collapsed. Bugger it, I said, and left it where it fell. Not much of an issue any more – much of the fallen wood has been fed into our woodburner.
Ah, but you should see the pile of wood that’s yet to be stacked!
I am very much enjoying reading your expat adventures in NZ. My wife and I came over in 2002 and have been very happy to call NZ and in particular Upper Hutt home ever since.
If you ever make it over to our market on a Sunday morning please say hello!
Thanks Chris. I didn’t know about the Upper Hutt farmer’s market until recently. I’ll have to check it out.