Winter arrived. But not as bad as I expected. I fired up the wood stove with a vengeance and have been trying to keep it fed, but there's a small problem of having a bunch of 30" logs over four feet long and not owning a chainsaw.
Yes, I know, you can get chainsaws at Walmart for $99, but that doesn't include the cost of gas, oil, replacement chains, sharpening, and loss of limbs when you accidentally cut through a leg thinking it was a branch. I have a long history of doing much high dollar damage with inexpensive common every day things, so a chainsaw is not something that is going to live in my garage. Not that I haven't borrowed one once or twice, but its an item to treat with the utmost respect and to use as little as possible.
Wood hacking
It turns out with a small electric saw and about twenty wedges you can eventually mangulate the wood into smaller pieces. It helps in this case that the wood in question has been dead a long time and in some cases is so rotted that the application of a hammer will cause it to crumble apart. But I digress.
So while keeping the house well above 70°F on most days, I've managed to stay under the magic 50 bag mark at least for this month.
| Month | This year | Last year |
|---|---|---|
| September | 360 | - |
| October | 1,360 | - |
| November | 1,640 | 1,200 |
| December | 1,920 | 1,720 |
| January | to be continued... | 2,000 |
