Joshua and I have just reached the point in “On the Shores of Silver Lake” where the Ingalls family move into the surveyors’ house ahead of a long winter. In the fourth book of the Laura Ingalls Wilder series we see the family in a place already provisioned to the rafters. Heck,they even have coal for the stove. We have no coal for our wood burning stove which could really come into play this winter the way gas prices are heading.
However we do have two enormous piles of branches from the trees we have removed here at the hovel. Before any green loon gets too outraged, we have been massive net planters of trees but some older or dying ones had to come down. Slowly, I saw the branches and day by day the piles grow. My dread is having to saw wood to keep the fire burning when it is freezing outside as was the case last year. So this year, one barn is a dedicated wood store with ever growing piles of logs, sorted by size, sat inside drying off.
Looking at the weather forecast, I am not planning on starting a fire for a couple of weeks at least. And thus, at the current rate, we should have enough logs to last us until Christmas by then. And at that point each not so cold day should allow for more branch sawing and less wood burning so adding to the pile.
