Our version of retirement: Living a childhood dream

Getting a jump on next winter’s wood
We’ve still got three cord left over from this season,
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so I figger eight more cord will make a worry free next winter

Something about swingin’ the maul, busting rounds
Get’s the ol’ bod moving
Muscles coming alive
Blood, flowing
Knocked out the first cord today
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It’s raining
We don’t get much rain here in what’s sometimes called the high desert
Felt so good against the face
The breeze at 50° kept me cool

It’s a must to keep it off the ground if one plans on using the bottom row or two
in the middle of winter
We use what’s sometimes called ricks
cement blocks and 2x4s
A rick is 1/3 cord, or sometimes called a face cord
16” x 4’ x 8’

the shop seemed lonely so I opened its doors
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‘tis a good feeling to bust up wood, look at it, all piled and tight
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Will sleep well tonight

Ohhhhh, yeaaaaahh
 
Used to love cutting and chopping wood for the winter. I used to cut, chop and stack 2 cords every Spring for the upcoming winter in NH. I was only at the house on weekends, and maybe one week of vacay in Jan/Feb to go snowmobiling, so 2 cords was more than enough. I did this the first 6 years I had the house, then the arthritis pain in my shoulders became too much to bear after a day of chopping. I contemplated buying a hydraulic splitter but never did. I ended up buying two cords of split green hardwood every May from a neighbor that lived a couple miles away, he ran a tree cutting business. He gave me a decent deal at the time of $175 per cord, cut to 19" - 21" lengths and delivered back in 2001, and the price when I sold the house in 2011 was $225 per cord. He'd dump it near the wood shed and I would stack it afterwards. All of his wood was mostly ash and oak, good stuff for the stove. I always gave the green wood a good spraying with some bug killer when stacking, that would ensure the wood to be mostly bug free in the winter when I brought it in the house. It's not fun when you bring some wood in the house that's infested with carpenter ants or one of the other tree dwelling bugs.

The one thing that always bugged me about the job of chopping wood for winter was how many times you'd need touch each piece of wood before it was actually in the stove. You had once to cut to length, twice to chop, third to stack, fourth to bring it in the house and a fifth time to actually put it in the stove to burn it. I had a wood rack in the house that was equal to about 1/4 cord, I'd top it off every weekend so i never ran out in the house. It is a labor intensive process, but nothing beats the warmth and comfort of a wood stove. I could sit and stare at the fire for hours at night drinking a few beers or in the am sipping on coffee, it always relaxed me and there was a good feeling of accomplishment knowing it was mostly my labor that made it happen.
 
JimW said:
I always gave the green wood a good spraying with some bug killer when stacking, that would ensure the wood to be mostly bug free in the winter when I brought it in the house. It's not fun when you bring some wood in the house that's infested with carpenter ants or one of the other tree dwelling bugs.
Click to expand...
Oh, yeah
Gotta have wood…. in, close to the stove, in winter
I built a small rick just for that
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We don’t spray, but we do give each piece a knock before bringing in

We’ve pretty much used all the trees here that I care to, downed ones, leaners, standing silvers, in our clean up and for winter wood
Now buying rounds from a kid down the path
16” long
$120/cord (best price here)
I get to split it, but not wear out my new Husqvarna saw just yet

The lodge pole pine are rather puny in diameter (not wider than 12 inches), but are prized here since their bigger brothers, the ponderosa, are quite pitchy and given to creosote build up

The kid I buy from is quite the lad
Many colorful stories, but no cuss words (a bit rare here)
He’s built like a tank, not fat, just sinew
Works as fast as he talks, and is true to his word
His ford 250 looks like it was broke in with his chopping maul
Not a place on it that doesn’t have a dent
But that 460 purrs like a kitten
And his phone has more cracks than clear glass

When he off loaded this cord, he complained of some aches/pains
not like him
gave him some balm
he's 40 now, knows I'm staring hard at 70
we do a lot of teasing back and forth

We became fast friends

keep a fire
 
Gary O' said:
Oh, yeah
Gotta have wood…. in, close to the stove, in winter
I built a small rick just for that


We don’t spray, but we do give each piece a knock before bringing in

We’ve pretty much used all the trees here that I care to, downed ones, leaners, standing silvers, in our clean up and for winter wood
Now buying rounds from a kid down the path
16” long
$120/cord (best price here)
I get to split it, but not wear out my new Husqvarna saw just yet

The lodge pole pine are rather puny in diameter (not wider than 12 inches), but are prized here since their bigger brothers, the ponderosa, are quite pitchy and given to creosote build up

The kid I buy from is quite the lad
Many colorful stories, but no cuss words (a bit rare here)
He’s built like a tank, not fat, just sinew
Works as fast as he talks, and is true to his word
His ford 250 looks like it was broke in with his chopping maul
Not a place on it that doesn’t have a dent
But that 460 purrs like a kitten
And his phone has more cracks than clear glass

When he off loaded this cord, he complained of some aches/pains
not like him
gave him some balm
he's 40 now, knows I'm staring hard at 70
we do a lot of teasing back and forth

We became fast friends

keep a fire
Click to expand...

I was always cutting down a tree here or there in NH. I had 1.5 acre of land and it was loaded with trees that either fell on their own or needed to come down for one reason or another. I'd take down pretty much anything that wasn't over 40 feet tall as long as it had a clear path to fall. Some of the pines were well over 70-80 feet tall, those needed to come down in sections or they would just get hung up on another tree, so I left the biggies for the experts.

I called my firewood guy to come take down one of those 70+ footers that was within 20ft or so of the house. He brought a sidekick with him, a small guy about 5ft tall and couldn't have weighed more than 130lbs soaking wet. The small guy was the climber, he went up that tree with a 14" Stihl hanging from his belt, a rope around his waist and a pair of spikes on his feet. The boss says to me "watch him, he's like a monkey on the trees". That lil guy scaled up that tree with little to no effort in a matter of seconds. He started cutting off the branches, some easily 20-30 feet in length and as they were ready to fall he'd direct them where he wanted them to fall with one hand stacking them in piles with excellent precision. When he was done with the branches he went after the trunk which was about 20 inches in diameter on the top where he made the first cut, and well over 3 feet at the bottom where he made the last cut with that same 14" Stihl. It took him a total of about 2 - 2 1/2 hours to fell the entire tree down to ground level. I was amazed watching him go. It took about another 2 hours for the two of them to cut everything up into moveable pieces, and load it in their dump truck. All for $600, not bad for a tree that size. Here in Mass that would cost around $1500 at least.
 
JimW said:
"watch him, he's like a monkey on the trees".
Click to expand...

I know that guy!

Truly, those guys are nothing short of amazing.

I used to glide thru the woods like a gazelle

Now?

I trudge, mosey

on a good day

carefully picking my way thru twigs
 
I’m such a sap
A pushover

Fam came by last night
Brought grandkids

Anyone three and under, looking up into these wretched squinty eyes, with their innocent, clear, searching eyes, three inches away
Can have anything they ask for

It helps escalate things when patted on the knee by a tiny hand

If ‘please’ is in the request, and I don’t have it, we’ll be doing some driving

Happily, one of a half dozen world’s sweetest granddaughters requested something within our home

I’m pretty good with the over/under

She prefers the 357
 
A word about upkeep

There’s clean
And there’s camp clean

The first months here we maintained a version of our practices in town
No, there’s no lawn to mow
No edging, preening the yard
But self upkeep, laundry, doing the dishes, as fastidious as if in town, was doggedly practiced
To the point of it all taking a grand portion of our waking hours
It’s funny how getting things to the stage of sterile has become quite the industry
Whiter than white
I was no exception
I
Am a shower slut
Installed the most sophisticated hand held nozzle for our garden tub, money could buy
That was town

Here?
Bought a couple versions of plastic camping shower bag devices
The anemic nozzles jus…didn’t…..cut it
Got a BIG! crew size plastic drinking water cooler
Cut a hole at the bottom edge
Installed a hose, with a shut off
Secured it to a tree
Ran water into half of it from 200 feet of garden hose from the well
Poured scalding hot water into the rest of it
It worked!
Got weary of that in less than a week
Resigned myself to sponge baths
Quick
Efficient
Into the day’s work much sooner than the shower
Found out that scaly scalp I’d worried about was from too many hair washings
Same with skin
Need at least some of those natural oils

Reminded me of the first newly built house we bought in the ‘90s
A few weeks into our residence I noticed an occasional humming sound.
Discovered the source in our closet
It was an air changer, sending out stale bad air and sucking in fresher bad air.
Bandied this about with builders, designers.
They gave me some links telling, in long fancy words, why.
It didn’t come close to stemming the incredulity in my voice, when saying,
‘let me get this straight, we began building air tight houses in the name of reducing heat costs and over all energy savings, then, after finding out people get sick from breathing their own fetid air, every new house has to have wunna these, right?’

Loved the explanation;
‘Gary, it’s the law.’

Our cabins are not air tight
We have wood stoves
‘nough said

My lady washes our clothes with an old fashion wash board
Dry ‘em on the rack behind the wood stove in winter
On a line in summer
We do the dishes in a dish pan, soapy, rinse, dry on the shelf
Doubt if anything we have is sterile
Not even me…….yet

Getting ready for bed now
But first, to the back yard
To mark my territory
While breathing in, deep..... a reason we are here
 
Last edited:
Gary O' said:
A word about upkeep

Reminded me of the first newly built house we bought in the ‘90s
A few weeks into our residence I noticed an occasional humming sound.
Discovered the source in our closet
It was an air changer, sending out stale bad air and sucking in fresher bad air.
Bandied this about with builders, designers.
They gave me some links telling, in long fancy words, why.
It didn’t come close to stemming the incredulity in my voice, when saying,
‘let me get this straight, we began building air tight houses in the name of reducing heat costs and over all energy savings, then, after finding out people get sick from breathing their own fetid air, every new house has to have wunna these, right?’

Loved the explanation;
‘Gary, it’s the law.’

Our cabins are not air tight
We have wood stoves
‘nough said
Click to expand...

Here in Mass (and many other states), all newly built homes and any older homes that have kitchen remodeling done that includes a stove/oven hood that exhausts to the outside are required by code to have a fresh air supply system installed as well. This was never an issue in the older homes as there was always sufficient make up air available in the home just from the normal cracks and crevices that every home had. Now with these airtight homes the air is stagnant and requires make up air systems to keep the indoor air fresh and the heating/central air & kitchen exhaust systems working properly. We seem to have defeated the purpose of all these energy efficient homes with energy efficient appliances and cooling/heating systems by requiring additional systems to make sure they operate properly and keep the air in the house from becoming toxic. Everything can be taken too far and it usually is when it comes to govco.
 

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