First I toss the wood from the pile outside the woodshed where Gregg Burch dumps it into the woodshed. Then I go into the woodshed and stack it.
This evening as I was inside the shed stacking wood, I heard a riot of chirping. I looked up and directly over my head, on one of the log roof rafters, was a swallows nest with four baby bird heads popping out of it. I watched them till they quieted down and their little heads disappeared into the nest.
As I picked up the last of the wood, I saw the pile of bird poop which was on the ground under the nest and found half of a small white shell with black speckles on it.
Before tossing more into the shed, I waited outside. It wasn’t long before I saw the mother Barn Swallow fly through the window above the door and, I imagine, to her nest.
I look in the barn every day where there are five Barn Swallow nests, but I haven’t seen any yet. I expect they’ll be hatching soon.
Yesterday Greg Burch dropped off two more cords of firewood. I look out my studio window at it piled in front of the woodshed. It calls to me. But I started working on a quilt and it has my attention. I’ll start stacking it this weekend.
I’ve been stacking this winter’s wood a little at a time, usually in the evening when the sun is on the front of the house. Tonight I looked out my studio window and saw it was already too dark in the woodshed to do any stacking.
Gregg Burch, the logger who we get our wood from has been delivering one cord at a time. I try to keep up with him so the pile doesn’t get too big.
A bunch of trees came down in a recent storm just up the road from us and Gregg is cleaning them up and bringing the wood to us. It makes me feel good to know he didn’t have to chop down any trees for us so far.
The wood pile after the wood fell and another cord of wood was delivered
Jon and I were in the house when we heard the strange loud noise. It was like a big metal garage door opening. I went out to see what it was and found half of the outer layer of firewood had fallen from the stack.
First thing I did was make sure the cats were on the porch, thinking that maybe one of them had tried to climb up the wood to get to the beds in the attic of the woodshed. But they were both on the porch, the woodshed is probably too hot for them this time of year.
So I rethought my stacking and came up with another idea of how to even out the uneven spaces that were probably responsible for the wood falling.
Before I got to restack the wood, Greg Burch came with another cord. And it turned out it was good he did, because it as easier to do it all at once.
It was more fun stacking the wood this way, and it took a lot longer. But (I’m knocking on wood as I write this) this time I think I did a really good job.
I took a sloppy bricklayers approach by stacking the wood in opposite directions making sure to interlock the ends with the middle. I also made the stack lean back into the wood behind it, not go straight up.
So I have my fingers crossed.
I still have to clean up all the kindling scraps and I’d like to cut up the branch that fell from the maple tree and add it to the pile. Then I’ll throw a tarp over the top of the stack.
The last cord that Greg delivered, makes seven total, which should be enough to get us through the winter.
The wood shed is full. I’ll stack the rest of the wood on pallets just outside, then put a tarp over the top of it.
I pulled into the parking lot at the Cambridge Valley Vet, just up the road from the farm. It rained all day and I knew the mosquitos would be overwhelming in the woods, so Fate and I were going to walk on McMillan Road instead.
We got out of the car and Fate made a beeline for Nicole, who was walking towards us from the Vets office.
Fate knows Nicole well. She’s our Vet Tech, watches our animals when we go away and helps stack our firewood. “We’re just taking a walk,” I yelled to her across the parking lot, then told Fate not to jump.
Fate was too excited not to jump, but Nicole’s used to Fate. “I wanted to show you this picture” she said, “I came across it the other day.”
Nicole handed me a photo, the color saturated, everything in it colored an orangey-red. There was a barn, an open field, and a tiny man standing next to what looked like miles of stacked wood.
“I grew up stacking wood” Nicole said. Her father cut and sold firewood for a living. “I don’t think twice about stacking a cord of wood.”
Nicole is a creative wood stacker. I learned things I never knew about stacking wood from watching her.
We get two cords of wood delivered at a time, and by the time you get a quarter of the way though, the pile of wood is far enough away from the wood shed, to make carrying two pieces of wood at a time a drudgery.
So when I saw Nicole and her son Keen, tossing the wood into the shed, I was intrigued. And when I tried it myself I saw how it worked for me in two ways.
First it was much easier and quicker to throw the wood than walk back and forth. But the other thing it does is break down the process so you’re constantly getting a sense of satisfaction.
There’s immediate gratification in making smaller piles of wood, and then stacking them, because you can actually see your progress. And because I can be obsessive, that always make me one to throw, then stack, just one more pile.
The other thing Nicole taught me was that the wood doesn’t always have to go in the same direction. I do this with the ends that hold the stack, but Nicole does it throughout the stacks. I don’t know if she has a reason for doing it that way, but it seems to work.
So when there’s a small space where the wood won’t fit length-wise, I now fill it in, in which ever direction the wood fits.
This may seem like common sense, and it really is, it’s just that I never thought of it before I saw Nicole do it.
“I didn’t get to help stack any of your latest batch of wood, but I can get there next week” Nicole said to me before Fate and I left on our walk.
“Oh, I said “I’ll have it done before then.”
And we smiled at each other knowingly, Nicole likes stacking wood as much as I do.
It’s hard to ignore when Greg Burch pulls up in front of my studio with two cords of wood and dumps it right outside my window.
Actually everyone on the farm seems to notice when Greg shows up. The cats run, the dogs stand at the gate watching and Jon get is his camera and a check to pay Greg.
Jon already called Nicole, who will be coming by this weekend to help stack it. And I’m okay with that. Although it’s still calling to me as I sit here writing, I don’t have the same motivation as I did with the first two cords we got delivered.
I’m not feeling like my self-worth is caught up in how much wood I stack.
I do think I worked though something important these past few weeks about my value as a woman, as myself.
When I first made my I Am Enough Potholders years ago. They were more of an affirmation of what I wanted. A belief without ownership. But it feels like something shifted inside of me after the visualization I experienced last week.
It’s been coming a long time, but now I have a sense of acceptance and peace around the idea that I am enough. Like it just may be true.
One of the trees I planted in the woods this Saturday.
I’m usually in my studio when Greg comes with a truck full of fire wood and dumps it just outside the woodshed. Fate whines at the gate and soon Jon comes out with a check to pay Greg. I see this all because it happens right outside my studio window.
I don’t think of the trees that the logs came from when I see the new pile of wood.
I think of how it needs to be stacked and how in four or five months we’ll be burning the logs in our stoves to keep warm.
I do think of the trees when I’m moving the wood. When I’m stacking it in the woodshed in the spring and summer or loading it onto the cart from the shed and bringing it into the house in the fall and winter.
It’s when I’m picking up each piece of wood, seeing and feeling the bark through my gloves that I think of the tree it came from. Sometimes, I can identify the kind of tree, but even if I can’t, I still imagine the log a part of something much bigger and alive.
Sometimes I silently thank the tree the wood came from.
Mostly I think of the tree as being harvested, like a crop. And I imagine that with each tree Greg cuts down, someone, somewhere is cultivating more woods to be harvested twenty years from now.
That’s the story I’ve always told myself, but I have no idea if it’s actually true.
This year, when I got an invitation in the mail to join the Arbor Day Society, I opened it up instead of just using it as fire starter.
With a $25 membership I would receive 10 small trees.
I put my check in the mail and this Friday I got the plastic bag in the mail with ten Norway Spruce.
I decided that from now on, every spring I would plant ten trees in our woods, to replace the trees that we used that year to heat the house.
Of course we don’t burn pine in our wood stoves, so next year I’ll be sure to get some hard wood trees to plant too.
I’ve been stacking and burning wood for many years. Now that I’m aware of it, I’m surprised it took me this long to think about replacing the trees.
It rained all weekend, so the small trees I planted have a good chance of getting established. And they’re close enough to the creek that I can easily bring them water during the summer. I don’t imagine they’ll all survive, but maybe a few will. And over the years, that will hopefully make a difference.
Our dwindling pile of firewood as I stack it in the woodshed. Six more cords to go before winter.
We got a load of wood yesterday and there’s some rain and snow coming tonight so Jon and I (with some help from our friend Jack) will spend the day stacking wood. I rarely take a day away from my studio to do this kind of work, but we need to get the wood in the shed before it gets covered with snow and ice. Luckily it’s a beautiful day here today. Sunny and warm (may even get up into the low 40’s!) a good day to be outside. (Maybe nice enough for those Zombie Hens to come out of the roost)
The song came to me last week as stacked the wood. It came slowly. First, a quiet tune running through my head. It was one of those familiar folk tunes, although I don’t know what songs it comes from.
Then I started humming it, bits and pieces flowing through me. After a while, the words came. I didn’t think about them, they were just there, rattling around in my head.
“I get to live my life, I get to live my life, I get to live my, every single day.”
At first, I sang quietly, but as I pulled each piece of wood from the pile and placed it on the stack, I got louder. And like the crickets and frogs, the darker it got the louder I sang.
I felt the words coming up from my belly and the truth of each one as they came out of my mouth. Soon I was singing so loud the song vibrated around me. I had no idea what I sounded like and didn’t care.
A sense of freedom coursed through me. As if I had arrived at a place I’d been longing for all my life.
It’s all I’ve ever wanted really. To be able to live the life I chose. Without feeling guilty or bad about my decisions. Without feeling the need to live up to other people’s expectations.
That song has been going through my head since last week. Sometimes I make up new words for it but I don’t remember them from one time to the next.
This afternoon as I stacked the last of the wood, I sang my song over and over again, sometimes to myself, but mostly out loud. So loud at times that Jon heard me in the house.
The last time I wrote about stacking wood Leslie left a comment on my blog saying….
Maria, you have organically and spontaneously (yay! you!) experienced the somatic healing that comes with “rhythmic patterned repetitive movement.” The list of repetitive, rhythmic regulations that have been used for healing trauma is extensive; I think wood stacking can now be added!
She was referring to how I had been intentionally thinking good thoughts as I stacked the wood.
Jon always wants me to get help stacking the wood (which is kind of him) and I always tell him I like doing it myself. I think because I intuitively understand that it’s good for me not only physically, but emotionally.
It’s a process that I use to work things through. Similar to the way dreams bring up issues that we need to address or cleanse ourselves of.
Jon wrote about my stacking wood as work I love to do. And how it’s not really working because I love doing it. “If there is a code that binds Maria and me as much or more than any other, it is this idea of living our lives.” he wrote.
In one version of my song, I sing that I get to choose what I do every day. That doesn’t mean I don’t have to do things I’d rather not, or that I get to do everything I want to. But I do get to make the decisions about my life that I believe is best for me. And I get to take responsibility for them.
I just got in from stacking wood. I stopped to look at the almost full moon which was just over the trees on the edge of the pasture.
Earlier, after I finished designing my Crow Red Quilt, I hung it on the barn and Jon took this photo of it with his Lecia camera.
I’ve been having a hard time capturing the true colors of the quilt. I turned off the light in my studio and had to hang the quilt on the wall otherwise the yellows turned white and the reds were all off.
Jon’s photo is very close to the true colors.
Below is a closer picture of Carol Conklin’s crow batik and the Mola Art. My Red Crow Quilt will be for sale when I finish it.
