Ready for Winter

We have a fireplace in the living room, wood burning.  It doesn't give off much heat but it sure is pretty to look at.  We also have a wood burning stove in the dining room.  This stove gives off some serious heat and once we have a good fire going in it we can heat the whole house, even the upstairs.  When we moved in one of our goals was to harvest enough wood to heat the house for the winter.  We do not have a log splitter yet so Jamie spent time here and there cutting down trees and cutting the wood into chunks.  He then stacked the pieces near our wood shed and covered it with a tarp so it wouldn't get wet. 

Last weekend we decided we had enough wood and went and rented a log splitter.  We had it Saturday afternoon to Monday morning.  We immediately went to work splitting and stacking.  We actually got finished Saturday and didn't want it to go to waste just sitting there on Sunday so Jamie dropped two more trees. Jamie & Drew split and stacked it while Hailey and I canned up some pasta sauce and pickle, also for the winter time.

Jamie says we have approximately 3 cords of wood.  We are hoping this will get us through the winter.  It will be nice to go from paying over $1500 a season for heating to just $100, which is the cost of renting the splitter and buying gas to run it.  Not to mention the house will be nice and toasty warm.

Drew with the first stack of wood

Hailey running the log splitter

Drew with the 4th stack of wood

This above picture shows Drew with our 4th stack of wood, what you can't see is the stack to right is actually our 3rd stack of wood.  All to the right has 3 stacks of wood deep and is at least over 5 feet high, since it was taller than me.  The 4th stack of wood is along the back and a small 1/2 stack is to the left, which is made up of smaller sticks and logs for overnight heating.

This was the last picture I took of all the wood but when Jamie and Drew did the last two trees on Sunday, this stack of wood reached the ceiling and then another full stack and half was added in front of it.

Jamie working with the log splitter

Kids all finished stacking wood.

You would of thought they would of been smiling in the above picture since we were finally done for the day.  They both worked very hard and each one had some scrapes and scratches on them.  We all slept well that night and was a little sore the next day.  I'm sure I can speak for all of us that we are happy to have this chore done.  Well at least until next year when we will have to start all over again.