Our Beautiful Woodbox

Knowing a wet winter storm was expected by nightfall, I filled up the woodbox before I left this morning. I love our woodbox. Despite having a woodstove as our only source of heat, I didn't want my living room to look like a backwoods hunting cabin. I wanted a woodbox that looked like a piece of furniture. So I drew what I wanted, showed Aries where it had to sit, and then he figured out how to build it. It's beautiful! In the summer, when the lid is closed, most people think it's a blanket chest. And then, in the winter, we can take off the lid and pack it with enough wood to keep a fire going for three days.

It's my turn to post on the Simple Green Frugal Co-op blog. I've written about heating with wood. To see what my woodbox looks like in winter-mode, check out that post here.

Guardian of the Hearth

A grey brick chimney forms the center of our home. A wood stove backed up to the fireplace opening provides our heat. The hearth, quite literally in our case, is the heart of our home.

Above the wood stove is a clock. Aries made it from a slice of redwood burl his dad gave him - sanding and buffing the prettiest side, hollowing out a space in back to hold the clockworks, gluing numbers on the face.

The wood of the clock completes the balance of our hearth - the earth chimney, metal stove, fire within, water in the teapot and steamer. There's one more element there too - the guardian of our hearth.

From his perch to the left of the clock face, many don't even realize he's there. Most of the year, and especially cold winter mornings, he blends right in with the grey brick behind. During the winter, though, when the stove is going, the rising warmth makes him turn a bright green color. Though still somewhat in the shadows, he's there to protect the wall from falling (nice thought, in an seismically active area) and guard our hearth from evil (also nice to have).

He found me on one of my walks with the dog, accompanied us home, and has found a home above our hearth ever since. Though some may call him a gargoyle, more properly says he, he's a grotesque - since he lives inside the dwelling and has never functioned as a drainspout. Also, completely proper, he has wings, and so can patrol the rest of the house for us during the dark of night. We can rest easy, knowing he's there to protect our home.

December Cold

Oh, brrr! It feels like December now. My car had been slow starting the past couple of weeks, and then a couple of days ago wouldn't start at all. Time to go battery shopping. I was only heading out to run some errands, so it didn't bother me to stay home until Aries got home from work. I was just glad it finally died on a day when I didn't really have to be anywhere. I should be fine now. At least, I hope so.

Our night temps have been falling into the teens(F) but it's been warming up daytimes into the low 50's. With the draft dodger at the kitchen door, the styrofoam panel on the glass sliding door, inside the house has been dropping to around 60F by morning. But the sun coming in the east window warms it up enough that I usually don't bother to start a fire until afternoon.

Not today! Last night's low was 6F, and the house was down in the mid-50's by morning. Good thing I switched our bedding over to the down comforter last week. The barometer is falling and there's a miserable cold wind kicking up horrible sandstorms. Clouds moving in mean no solar warming today, and the first snowflakes are zipping by sideways. I've had a fire going for hours, and it's now warmed up to the mid-60's inside - that's a comfortable temperature for me. The house pets have stretched out from their tight little curls, bellies towards the stove. I had to take fresh water out to the birds at noon - what Aries took out in the morning before leaving for work had already iced over. Forecasts say its gonna get a lot colder in the next few days. Hello, Winter!

Not For Amateurs

Aries grew up in a home heated with wood, up at Lake Tahoe. When he was eight, he was considered old enough to go out with his dad and grandfather cutting wood. When he was twelve, he was big enough to hold a chainsaw to cut downed trees into sections, his grandfather helping pick the saw up each time afterwards. By sixteen, they let him start felling trees. He knows what he's doing, and he likes it when he gets the chance to play with a chainsaw.

Last month, he had the chance to help out a couple friends of mine. We live just above the valley floor. Our native vegetation is desert chaparral - sagebrush and other shrubby plants. But the hills rise steeply just west of us, and the change in altitude is just enough that tall conifers thrive. My friends live just a couple of miles away, up a canyon, but it's enough to be a completely different environment.

One friend had some pines infected with some kind of root fungus. In order to save the surrounding trees, the infected ones were marked to be cut down. She doesn't burn wood, but her next door neighbor, another friend, has a wood stove and she needs the wood. So we headed up to do a bit of woodcutting (well, ok, Aries does the cutting - I'm there in case of emergency and as laborer after the tree is down).

He cut two then, and left one dead, broken, leaning one as too unsafe to cut - that one will have to be chained up and pulled with a tractor enough to drop. When we went back later to cut the last two, I remembered to bring my camera. For the first tree that day, the only place to drop it was right down the driveway towards the house. In the top photo (click on any photo to see better), I've got my back to the house, standing right about where the top of the tree should land. Next photo, you can see the tree bounced a bit left when it hit, but overall it pretty much went where it should. Of course, we then had to get it out of her driveway - Aries cutting, I dragging limbs away to slash piles, rolling cut sections over to another pile.

Then on to the last tree - probably the tallest one Aries had ever cut (Aries is 6'4" for scale). For this photo, I'm standing between the house and garage, a low wall in front of me - the tree would more than reach to where I'm standing. Aries wants the tree to fall to the left, and is just starting the throat cut on that side. There's no wind, the tree is growing straight on level ground, it's symmetrically shaped - it should be no problem, and then we're done for the day. Wrong!

The throat cut lined up perfectly, Aries moves over to the other side. I usually watch for the top of the tree start to sway. But this time I'm zoomed in, watching him through the camera lens, thinking I'll snap an action photo when it starts to fall. Suddenly, he raises his right arm out straight, pointing the opposite direction, signalling to me this tree is breaking backwards. I lower the camera, watching him back away with the saw, still pointing, and start backing up. Open-mouthed, I watch as the tree spins more than 180º on its stump, and then falls away to the right. Amazingly, it landed completely in the clear - just not at all where it was supposed to.

Aires said he felt the saw suddenly go dull in the last couple seconds of cutting. Upon examination, he found wire inside the tree on the side where it spun instead of breaking. It turns out the previous owner, decades ago, had run an electric fence by just nailing the insulators to the trees. This tree, growing quickly next to the leach field, had engulfed the wire so he'd just cut the wire, leaving nail, insulator, and wire hidden inside. We were so lucky the tree didn't fall towards the house, didn't hang up in any of the surrounding trees, and Aries wasn't hurt.