Chop Chop

It’s that time of year again…firewood chopping season. For weeks and weeks now we’ve had it on the to-do list: firewood. Must get firewood. We even prolonged lighting the fire this year, partly due to our unseasonably warm weather, partly for use of our split system instead, as we held off burning our precious wood. But the time had come to sharpen the chainsaw, pull the wood splitter out of the shed and get chopping…

The weekend turned on superior firewood chopping weather – Autumn sunshine galore to work in, as is often the case the weather will of course turn the moment we get wood in the shed, and it has. We’ve got a lot of green wood so that will be stacked for the following years, drying out nicely, whilst I burn the dry stuff like an Olympic sport. My poor long suffering husband believes that I am a definite gold medal contender for burning wood – I like our little farmhouse toasty! Probably doesn’t help that our old weatherboards and floor boards leak heat like a sieve.

Matt’s dad did a day in the paddock on Saturday helping him chop and split and stack and haul wood from the paddock back to our woodshed. I have such strong childhood memories of collecting firewood and pine cones into spud bins of an Autumn weekend, a family event and necessity living in our cold climate. Now, in some of those same paddocks and familiar hills Eleanor does the same with us. On Sunday we lit a fire in the paddock up the hill from home, cooked some sausages, Grandad came and we saw the first of our lambs skittling nearby (of course the ewes will all now drop their bundles with the change in the weather!) A bright Sunday afternoon to bid farewell to the sunshine, I feel it was Autumn’s last hurrah as the weather set in last night, in time for lots of firewood to be burnt – much to Matt’s annoyance, his lovely stacked woodshed never lasts long and it pains him so!

At the moment Eleanor’s attention span doesn’t last much longer than shoving a sausage and bread in her face, and her wood stacking and splitting skills need work, but it won’t be long until she’s put to work too – if you want a cosy farmhouse you have to learn to chop wood! I remember two Winter’s ago doing this with a brand new baby blossom nearby in the pram sleeping, soon to be the same scene again. I love how the change in seasons brings new family memories to be forever filed away in my mind. I’ll remember my babies as newborns in our chilly Winters and chubby babies in Summer, almost two year old’s in another Winter, helping Daddy chop firewood and see the latest lambs hit the ground. Simple things, important things, hard work and long days, but big rewards and memories made.

Have you got your woodshed sorted?
Lambing in your neck of the woods?
Got a more helpful toddler than ours? Most likely…