Kindling for Winter

5 July 2012
9:33 PM

Sunset at	12:28 AM	in direction	340°	North-northwest
Sunrise at	3:23 AM	in direction	20°	North-northeast

Civil Twilight all day

We have not yet run out of wood before we stopped needing to heat the house, but we do run out of kindling.  You wouldn't think having kindling easily accessible would be such a big deal, but birch is not a soft wood and unless spruce is very dry, it can be sappy.  So, I have developed a habit of foraging for kindling.

Last year's store of thinned trees

I dried several good sized branches from last year's thinning of the trees in the yard.  They were slips of trees, crowding one another for the light, so we cut back some of the spruce to ensure winter sunlight.  I then took my handy little electric chain saw and cut each trunk into pieces that dried over winter.  At some point before the snow gets too deep, I will need to bring all that you see above closer to the house where we can actually get to them in winter.

But we always need more.  This year the borough maintenance crews cut back the foliage along side McGrath.  The machine clears to a specified distance from the road, sawing off the encroaching plant life.  It is amazing how quickly it grows back.  This is not the first time they have taken this patch of road and cut back new growth since we moved into our house.  I have been gathering pieces of what was cut as I walk back home from the bus stop.

Foraged wood being readied for stacking

The photo shows, along the back of the garage door, their condition when I bring them into the yard.  Many small twigs protrude off the side and these are trimmed off and tossed in the back of the truck to be taken to the transfer station.  We put our biodegradable trees in the containers for that purpose.  Larger pieces of wood are stacked against the garage door.  I can't use my branch clippers and will need to saw those with my chain saw.  The little stack in front is the result of an hour of work, cutting them to the right length, removing twigs, and so on.

After I finished the remaining forage by the garage door, I moved all of the cut kindling to the side of the house, stacked it on some boards so they would not be touching the ground and covered them against the rain.  Gary and I will take the truck and do some final wood gathering.  Then I will repeat the process, removing all the twigs and using the clippers on what I can easily cut.  then I will saw up the larger branches this weekend and stack them with the others on the side of the house.