I like burning wood. It seems there
is nothing better than sitting in front of a roaring fire on a cold winter’s
evening, cocktail in hand, warm apple pie in the oven and a good book nearby.
(You know I’m dreaming, right?) The reality is more about lugging in firewood,
shoveling out ashes, cleaning the chimney, and grumbling when a stove full of firewood
won’t ignite even after burning a weeks’ supply of kindling.
None of that is new to me since I’ve had two wood-burning
stoves and one fireplace in the three homes that I have owned. My latest
wood-burner is the best as it is most attractive, least polluting, and yields
lots of heat at a reasonable cost for firewood. It was the idea of reducing
heating costs that convinced me to make our current house design accomodate a
centrally located, freestanding wood burner. I never considered that cutting,
spitting, stacking and carrying firewood to the burner would be a dirty job and
a lot of work. I only thought about the savings in expensive propane.
Propane, you may know, is the fuel of choice for those of us
who live in areas that are remote from natural gas facilities or natural gas
pipelines. Despite its relatively high cost, it offers the convenience of providing
clean energy that can easily be piped to the basement, kitchen, or wherever a
small pipe can be routed to a burner. Since using a fair share of the gas, I
have learned more about why it is so expensive; it is because a greedy group of
speculators determine propane price by regularly wagering on how much they can get
away with charging for future supplies. That’s not the answer you’ll get if you
ask an official in the industry, however. They blame propane price increases on
the price of other fuels, assuming that you’ll believe energy users will
readily switch from one fuel to another whenever the price becomes attractive.
Ha – would that it were so easy!
Anyway, that brings me to this summer when I looked over my
woodpile and determined that my supply of firewood would be inadequate for the
expected cold.
“Time for another load,” I said as I dialed the local
purveyor who augments his income from the Road Commission by delivering
firewood in a huge truck that has someone else’s name on it.
“Sure,” he said, “although there has been a small increase
in price caused by the rising cost of propane.”
I was unable to answer for a moment until I finally mumbled
something about just bringing me my (%&--/+*ed) load of firewood.
So, here I am, in front of my load of firewood, faced with
the task of cutting, splitting and then stacking 10 cords of oak before it
dries out so thoroughly that splitting it becomes more of a nightmare than it
already is. It would have been much easier to split if I had ordered the wood
just before winter and allowed the below-freezing temperatures to freeze and
expand the moisture in the wood making it much easier to split. But no, I had
to wait until my wood supply was so low that more firewood was needed for THIS
WINTER, making certain that hot weather splitting is required, a more daunting
task.
I began working on my firewood a couple weeks ago. After the
first time, I had a sore back, dirty clothes and sawdust in my boots that
somehow ended up on my bathroom floor. After several days to recover, I took a
second lick at the woodpile that seemed exactly the same size as before my
first encounter with the dastardly load. The second work period lasted only
about an hour before I conceded defeat and went inside. This time, having
learned about the sawdust in the boots, I stood in front of the air compressor
to blow off dust before going inside to shower. It helped. There was so little
sawdust in the bathroom this time that I was able to hide most under the rug.
I am now on the fourth work session and the woodpile has
seemed to grow in size instead of diminish. Since I have been spending all that
time bent over a chain saw and lifting a splitting maul, I have had more time
to think about important things. For one thing, I have calculated that burning
firewood really does save lots of money if you are willing to work for
somewhere around 17¢ per hour. I have also learned that it is impossible to
avoid bringing sawdust into the house, that a sore back is inevitable, and that
you really do get warm twice when using firewood. Ain’t it grand!
*By the way, Keep the Home Fires Burning, was a patriotic song written in Great
Britain on the eve of World War I to encourage young men to join the war
effort. I understand that most men responded to the ditty and enlisted for the
war in order to avoid the work of getting their woodpiles cut and split for
winter.
