Of course, poor Laura Ingalls Wilder has, like almost all white folks born before 1980, been exposed and denounced Salem style, by wanker academics, as a vile racist. But in this mixed race household, the great libertarian remains hugely popular. Little House in the Big Woods is probably my favourite of her books but as Joshua and I surveyed our wood store, it is The Long Winter that springs to mind. The hero of that tale of a bitter winter in De Smet Dakota is an Indian, oops Native American, who warns the evil white colonists of what lies in store.
Unlike the Met Office, the Indian’s forecasts are accurate, not based on pseudo science and fake temperature readings from RAF Coningsby. And so Joshua and I stare at the wood store below as we contemplate the cold winter that lies ahead.
We have the wood from the various trees that have been knocked down by God this year as you can see in the top photo. But it is wet, that is to say the sap has yet to leave it. It will ensure that we are kept warm in the winter 2026/27 when it has been dried by the wind whistling through the main barn. But for this winter my store of dry wood, in the second photo, has been badly run down – just two and a half rows of wood five foot high, twelve foot across.
My own little (half) Indian, Joshua insists that it will be a mild winter and so we will be okay. I am not so sure. I know that Charles Ingalls would have hoped for the best but planned for the worst. And thus, the whole family is now tasked with picking up branches and stocks that lie in the fields, while I start to saw up some of the old planks, generally in a poor state, that lie in various barns.
I hope for an Indian summer, if I am allowed to use that phrase which comes from North America. Should I be hoping for a native American summer? But I should have at least two months before the wood burning stove is fired up again, in which to build up the log store.
