Clear
blue sky. Bright sunshine. Temperature in the 50s. We are making wood at Roshara. Steve on the chainsaw. Natasha all around helper. Me in charge of hauling with the ATV.
The
previous day I went on a scouting mission, searching for a dead oak—of which we
have several (oak wilt disease). I found
one, not too big, not too small, and close to the cabin.
Soon the
dead oak is down, and quickly sawed into chunks and loaded in the back of the
ATV. Three trips to the cabin and a
substantial pile of oak chunks is now ready for splitting. A few years ago I did the splitting (turning
the blocks into smaller pieces) with a maul, then Steve took on the splitting job, and now
we have a mechanical splitter that does the work for us.
By
mid-afternoon we are finished. A pile of
sweet smelling, freshly split oak is piled on the end of the woodshed—there for
a year to dry before we burn it.
As we
worked I remembered how we made wood when I was a kid, many times more of it than we did today. We heated our drafty farm house with two
wood stoves, kept another stove going in the pump house to keep the pump from
freezing, and still another in the potato cellar to protect the potatoes from
frost.
In those
days, we cut down several oaks in our 20 acre woodlot back of our house using a
two-person crosscut saw—there were no chainsaws. We hauled the long pieces of oak wood to the farmyard
with our team of horses, stacking the wood as high as we could reach.
When Pa
deemed the stack of wood large enough, we invited the neighbors—they also
heated their homes with wood stoves—to help saw the wood into shorter
pieces. One of the neighbors had a
gasoline engine powered circle saw that did the cutting.
But the
work was not yet done. We now had the
task of splitting the wood into pieces—smaller pieces for the kitchen cook
stove, larger pieces for the wood burning heaters. And then we carried a goodly amount of the
split wood into the woodshed, which was attached to the west side of the house.
Making
wood took up a substantial amount of time in the late fall, when the other farm
work was done. Usually, in mid to late
winter we ran out of wood and we repeated the process.
Today,
making wood is much easier, but a necessary task at Roshara as we have two wood burning
stoves in our cabin. And I must say, the
day we spend making wood each fall is one of the most fun days we have all year.
THE OLD
TIMER SAYS: Who ever said cutting wood warms you twice, hasn’t really done it.
Workshop:
Writing From Your Life:
Offered at The Clearing, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on October 28. Call 920-854-4088 to learn more and to
register. A few openings remain. TELLING YOUR STORY book used as a textbook in
the workshop.
Upcoming
Events:
October
26, Wednesday, 6:00 p.m, Carroll University, Community Conversation about Frac
Sand Mining in Wisconsin. Shattuck Music Center, 100 N. E. Avenue, Waukesha,
WI. Readings from THE GREAT SAND FRACAS
OF AMES COUNTRY. Open to the Public
October 28, 9-4. Writing
from your life—writing workshop at the Clearing in Door County (see above for
details)
November 3, 6:30. Rock
Springs Public Library, 6:30.
November 5, 10:00 a.m. Patterson Memorial Library, Wild Rose,
Roshara Journal
November 10, 7:00 p.m. Menomonie Falls Public Library. One-Room
Schools
Purchase Jerry’s DVDS and
his Books from the Patterson Memorial Library in Wild Rose, Wisconsin (a
fundraiser for them):
The library now has available signed
copies of Jerry’s DVDs:
Emmy Winner, A Farm
Winter with Jerry Apps (based on The Quiet Season
book.)
Jerry Apps a Farm
Story (based on Rural Wit and
Wisdom and Old Farm books.)
The Land with Jerry Apps, (based on the book Whispers and Shadows.)
Also available are several of Jerry’s signed books including:
Jerry’s newest novel, The Great Sand Fracas of Ames County.
and Wisconsin
Agriculture: A History.
Jerry’s newest books, Roshara Journal (with
photos by Steve Apps) and Telling Your Story—a guide book for those who
want to write their stories—are also available.
Contact
the library for prices and special package deals.
Patterson
Memorial Library
500 Division Street
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