Hard Wood

The Winter Ahead, My Practice of Burning

The Hob is the center of activity in winter

I have been stacking a lot of firewood. Two cords have been delivered to the farm since late August, half of what I need to stay warm this winter. And since it’s been 80° the last few days—it’s given me a false sense of security—as if I have more time to prepare for winter than I do.

September sunshine is tired light. It may be sweaty, but it doesn’t have the intensity of the summer. Heat in September feel like an overworked waitress on her third shift. Hot and bothered, but not because she wants to be.

In this heat I stack as much as I can between farm work and freelance gigs. I set aside a podcast a day to listen to while I stack. Usually it’s an episode of Spooked, which matches the vibes of my New York farm before Mabon. I try to stack a cord within a week of delivery, if possible.

Stacking hardwood is sweaty business. A repetitive motion of carrying heavy things from one place to another. I move the logs from where a trailer dumped them on the lawn to their new homes under sheds and cover, indoors and out. There’s a music to stacking, a way to do it that makes sense. How you make the end columns sturdy, how to set different weights and shapes. After a decade I don’t even think. I just stack.

If you’re not into hinterland units of measurement like firewood cords and horse hands; a cord is enough pieces of cut firewood that stacks 4' high, 4' feet wide, and 8' long. A cord of wood heats this farm for 4-6 weeks or so, weather depending. I go through a cord in a ten days if weather is below -10° each night.

Most pieces of firewood are small enough to hold in one hand, since they have already been cut to the size of my firebox (where the fire burns in the wood stove) and right now I have pre-bought all the heat I need for this farm until Yuletide, possibly longer if the weather stays abnormally warm. But I won’t be able to truly exhale until three cords are stacked.

It’s a promising start. I hope to buy in the third cord before end of the month, or early October at the latest. I’d prefer four cords, but three is the magic number. That means I’ll stay warm until early February, at least.

Friday and a stack of cordwood.

Most people that heat with wood only use that heat as supplementary. For the comfort of the occasional fireside night. Even out here in the middle of nowhere, I hear my neighbors’ massive generators turn on a few minutes after a power outage. Their systems of domestic comfort aren’t gone like mine when the power goes out. They installed a backup.

My backup is more wood.

I will say this. I like my fires. Hell, I love them. I love the need to stay home to keep warm. It means I am here through every snowstorm, up like a soldier every freezing night. I’m not going to your wedding. I’m not traveling for Christmas. I will not be at your New Year’s Party. I will be casting long shadows in the dark in front of my caged monster of light. I will be tending it in a way few people will ever tend to anything. I love that primitive comfort has to be constantly earned. It’s so simple, so honest, and so rewarding.

People don’t live like I do because they want to make life harder. Life is hard no matter what, but rarely does the hardship reward you the way homesteading does.

I told you I was stubborn.

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Owning a farm as a single working-class person is a practice in prioritization few salaried project managers could handle. Like the farm, energy goes towards whomever needs it the most to avoid larger issues. Goat is out of the fence and eating a bush across the road? You’re repairing fences instead of stacking firewood. So throw a tarp over the pile in case it rains and deal with the most important thing.

The best you can do is use your time wisely and efficiently without burnout or resentment. Learning that is the hardest part of farming, and I think the main reason why some of us do this forever and others quit after a few seasons. You have to have the mentality of a vowed monk, the energy of a field laborer, and the stubbornness of a dead horse in the road. If you got all three, welcome to agriculture. You’ll be fine, darlin’.

Stakes are high, stress is higher, but if you could walk my woods with me you’d understand why I put myself through all this, you truly would. Maybe not at first. Maybe you’d just see the work and the chicken poop and pimples forming around my hatband from sweaty afternoons. But if you stick around, the place drips with magic in a way I’m not a good enough of a writer to convey.

The closest I ever got to explaining the magic was the way friends act when they are near my wood stove on a cold day. The way they look around at the bounty of a farm after harvest, the tumble of butternut squash under the kitchen table. The basket of potatoes I dug up beside it. The crackle and warmth of the fire. The hats and sweaters steaming dry after snowy chores. The way a loaf of freshly baking bread or a roast chicken smells after coming in from the cold, tired and hungry. How it feels to tuck into a bowl of chicken pot pie as the sun sets and you know every animal is settled for the night... And the sense of safety, wholeness, nature and beauty a woman can have if she’s willing to give up comfort for possibility.

A hen that had a hard night resting by the stove, butt nuts to the right.

I am realizing it took me until after I came out to realize what I have here. You can’t see what you have when you don’t even know who you are, at least I couldn’t. When you are in a fog of stunted fear, unsure of where you belong or what you are, it’s impossible to do much more than survive in a situation like mine.

Things were a lot worse and a lot harder in my thirties. But now, I walk the path at dusk, standing over a ravine looking into gulch with the percussion of a stream and the melody of songbirds and start tearing up. Surrounded by lantern light and the memory of fireflies that feel like they are still here, like a phantom flash I can see if I close my eyes, even in September.

I am so grateful I’ve managed to hold onto this beautiful place this long, gratitude so intense it could crack a rib. And I think I was so scared of losing it, I wouldn’t even let myself accept I owned it. But I do. I still do.

Firewood for heat is one of the reasons I can afford to live here on my farm, full time. My entire winter heating bill rarely exceeds $1000 to go from October to March. Back when I used mostly heating oil—before installing the second wood stove in the living room—it was $450 a month just to keep this uninsulated old farm house around 58° on a January night, and that was heating oil prices 12 years ago…

It’s easier and more logical (for me) to shut off the second floor for the winter. A few years ago a friend helped me install a cold door, one that makes you enter through a second threshold after you step in through the front door. When you walk into my house on a January night, that cold comes in with you. You may feel like you walked into a house abandoned and lost to time in that dark entryway.

But when you open that second wooden door - the warm air holds you like an embrace. The candlelight, the waft of good hot food made by hand and the sounds of gentle music or a familiar movie. It feels like walking into a tavern in a storybook, but with pot and Netflix. It feels like a Hobbit hole, or the Beaver’s house in Narnia, with old episodes of Northern Exposure in the background.

It feels like every nest I ever made, from Idaho to Tennessee, and here finally turning around three times to lie down in the land of Sleepy Hollow. Folks, I find myself worshiping the same god I’ve known since I bought my first pair of chore boots: the blessing of a safe warm place after harsh work outdoors. Heaven may not be real, but you can create your own version of it now if you’re brave.

I know if I ever find myself without a wood stove, I won’t ever be able to feel truly warm again. Not like the warmth I once had, once tended, once burned and saved me - much like a lost love. No forced air from a baseboard will ever feel like falling asleep on sheepskins by a crackling fire tired from a day of removing snow by hand. No electric heater will replace hot coals and steam circling into a warm room from a cast-iron humidifier. There’s magic in the ordinary simplicity of having your needs met and that being enough. Enough for the soul, and to continue, and to wake up cold and ready to strike a match again.

Every cold morning is a rebirth. Every evening by the fire a reward that’s carved peace runes into my bones. And every fall, a chance to test myself once again if a winter here will feed or take away the desire to remain.

I’m going into this winter full-hearted and whole, in the place I call heaven, and believing in the same magic that brought me here.

I wish a winter by a need fire for you all someday. It’s a lot of work, but everything is, so you might as well fall in love with it.

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Extra Content in Audio Version: We talk about the new independently developed farm simulation game on Steam called We Harvest Shadows. There’s a free demo up now, and anyone with a PC that meets the requirements can play this amazing and beautiful story for free, at least the sample that’s available. The developer made it to deal with isolation and fear, had his own family members record the music, and it has amazing voice acting and story. Truly remarkable. You can download it here, or watch a sample here:

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Can’t Get Enough Wood Talk?

If you’d like to read an essay I published last winter for Northern Woodlands Magazine, this essay is free to read and lovely. Excerpt below!