Our wood situation

When we moved to the property, our agent mentioned something about us having "ten years worth of wood piled around the place". Apparently, the previous owner had been quite good about staying on top of cutting down the trees affected by the pine beetle. He had cut everything to fireplace length and stacked it in neat piles all over the property.

In early October, we noticed most of our fellow Horseflinnians stacking nicely, split logs in woodsheds or along side their homes. We marvelled at the sheer volume of wood they had prepared. We had some family over for dinner one night and they asked us if we had our winter wood ready...to which we replied with confidence, oh we have plenty stacked pretty close to the house. They smiled...you do have electric back-up heat as well right? Hmmm.


We had about three times the above picture, stacked along side of our house. Then in early December we were walloped with almost two feet of snow and -30 temperatures. Suddenly most of our wood was completely inaccessible. We have been able to dig out several piles from under the snow but the distance to our house has definitely multiplied. Just yesterday I was digging out this pile...

it is about 70 feet from our house. It felt like a mile as I was hauling my utility sled, loaded down with wood and falling into pockets of waist high snow every ten feet.

Most of what is left of our wood stash is also "unsplit"...which means fully round logs instead of nice quartered pieces of wood which catch quite easily. The unsplit stuff is okay, it's just to get the fire going again in the morning, etc., the split ones come in handy...not to mention that some of the big logs are just too big for the woodstove, so really need to be split to be used.

More lessons learned and...I think woodshed may have crept up in priority for the to do list.

Oh how I covet my neighbours beautifully split, stacked, accessible wood pile :)