We have 43 acres and we need wood???

We have pretty much been going full tilt right through the fall, mostly because we needed to get set up for spring, fall is flying past, and winter is going to be here before we know it.  The thought of winter is a little scary, since we have literally no idea what to expect.  Now I don’t want to accuse the locals of trying to scare us, but we have been hearing some pretty wild stories about 4-6 foot snow drifts, power outtages, road closures, snow days, and making sure that you have enough food on hand etc etc etc……   I am pretty sure that it is all exaggerated!

However! All of this has led us to the next burning issue that needs to be taken care of… wood!!!!  We need to get some wood to heat our house – you do remember that wood will be the only source of heat for Chuck & I – Fallon and Darren will be using wood as an add on to the electric heat they have.   And once again, we find ourselves receiving wildly different advice from various sources.  Whatever possessed me to think that maybe things were getting simpler now that we had settled down some.  Of course not!!!  Question on question on question, yet again.  How many cords will we need, what the heck is a true cord vs. a face cord, what kind of wood to buy, what lengths do we need it cut to, how much wood do we currently have??????  We track down a local guy who says that he would be happy to hook us up! Oh and apparently we “left it a little late in the season” to decide to order our wood.  Honestly!  How is it we didn’t just high tail it back to the city???

So according to our research we need somewhere between 4 and 13 cords of wood, our buddy says he has some well seasoned larch and some fir (uuhhmm OK! ) and he can either bring it cut in rounds or split.  Oh, split please, I have seen the whole splitting wood thing and will take a giant pass on that!  What I never even thougth about was how the wood was going to get from where is was dumped, into the shed where we are going to store it.  Silly me, I guess I thought it would just magically find its way there.  I was so wrong.

We move forward and order 8 cords of wood to keep both households through the winter…. we think.  Have you ever seen 8 cords of wood???   OMG!!! It took days and days and days and days! to haul it all into the wood shed… and that was with all hands on deck.  Our buddy just kept bringing his truck, filled to the brim with wood and dumping it in a big pile by the shed.  Hours upon hours of lugging wood from the pile into the woodshed.  Who needs to work out when you get to carry and pile wood! A cord stacked in the carport at the big house and about a half a cord stacked in our back patio and the rest stacked neatly (mostly!) in the wood shed.  OK Winter!  Bring it!
And not a moment too soon!  We had some wonderful down time with some of the neighbours and had some spectacular bonfires – mostly burning all of the construction debris we managed to accumulate while doing the renovations.  Beers and marshmallows – memories of being 18 again!!  In no time at all, we were holding our breath and waiting for our first snow!  We weren’t waiting too long!