100 days ago
I now feel a bit of a wuss writing this as my pal Darren sends photos of the snow in Canada outside his rural retreat where it is minus 17 degrees. I am not sure if it will snow here in North Wales next week. My kids hope it does and so do I as if there is even a light dusting of global warming, the Marxist Madrassa where the Mrs works will shut down and we will enjoy her company all week. But I do know that it will be cold by Welsh standards and that an alternative to switching on all our hugely expensive gas radiators is to run a fire in the main living room where folks can snuggle up and watch mid rot on the telly.. And that brings me to my birthday present to myself, in the first photo below, a heavy splitting axe.
278 days ago
At the end of our garden there is a wooden fence. Behind that is the old orchard which is far longer than it is wide, 7 or 8 yards from the garden is the river. Alongside the apple trees is a giant weeping willow. Well, as you can see, it is a bit less massive now. I have now idea why two enormous boughs broke and I did not hear any great crash. Presumably the snoring of the Mrs drowned that out. Yesterday, the cats, kids and I inspected the damage. The good news is that my pal Robert was due here next week to take down “the snake barn” and one last shed sited in the fields as we expand the orchard along the river. Robert is just the man to bring a chainsaw and deal with this. At a stroke the winter fuel for the wood burning stove is sorted without Joshua and I needing to do any sawing at all in the wood shed. Every cloud…
911 days ago
Fellow Woodlarks walker Robert tries to shame me with a photo of an impressive woodpile at his place. Now I know that size isn’t everything but after some hard work yesterday which even Joshua got involved with, our bigger logs have been split and the pile here in Wales grows as you can see below.
933 days ago
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.
1220 days ago
Wood cutting has become almost therapeutic in these dark days in lockdown Wales. Half an hour on weekdays and an hour a day at the weekend is the plan. Sometimes I have a day off. It all starts with a large pile of branches from trees cut down at the Hovel over the summer. I might drag three to the main barn and Joshua drags a small one if he is with me. That would be a weekday cut. At the weekend we double up.
1521 days ago
I have not decided, or rather the Mrs has not decided, whether to install a wood burning stove or two in a couple of the 17th century fireplaces at the Welsh Hovel. We may just go with an open hearth. And we will not be troubled by new batshit crazy plans from the Tories to ban the sale of domestic coal and most logs. We have enough of our own wood in our fields and in the old barns and sheds to last not just ourselves but also our neighbours, for a lifetime. However, we are unusual and lucky.
