One of the many new activities that farm life has brought us is taking in wood from our small but lovely forest. We have yet to optimize this process (having discussed alternatives such as using a horse to drag logs from the forest to the far, as well as buying a quad and bringing in chopped wood after having chopped it in the forest).
For now, we are happy to view this labor as exercise with a purpose – keeping the house warm! There is a primal pleasure in sawing down a tree, sawing it into logs that are the right length for our furnace, chopping the logs into firewood, and then stacking the firewood in neat boxes that are sheltered from the rain. The actual chucking of that same firewood into the furnace takes place at least 6 months from when the tree was cut down – usually longer, the drier the wood is the better!
We primarily take down trees that have broken after a storm, as well as trees that are growing on the very edge of the lake and are sick from too much water. We have a variety of species – a lot of spruce but also more sturdy kinds of trees such as aspen and beech. An added bonus of taking down spruces is that the goats love eating the needles and peeling the bark off the branches, especially now in wintertime when fresh greens are scarce.
