The Journal: Ash Fall Read Online Free PDF Page B

me
with and I certainly didn’t want to take advantage of him, plus I
didn’t want to wear him out. My heart tugged at the thought of him
going back to work soon.
    John grinned at me. “It’s been awhile since
I’ve used a chain saw. It might be fun.”
    Fun? I smiled, bemused. I don’t think he
understood how many trees there were, and that cutting was only the
first step. The bolts then need to be hauled up near the pallets,
much easier now with the four-wheelers, then there was the
splitting and stacking. It was all hot, sweaty work, and black fly
season was approaching, not to mention the ticks and the
mosquitoes, another reason I liked to get the firewood done
early.
     
    * * *
     
    It was always a shock to get that first load
of wood dumped in the yard. Keith showed up later in afternoon with
a trailer loaded instead of the dump truck. John gaped at the
pile.
    “Is all that going to fit into that small
shed?” he mumbled. The 8x8x8 shed held a full ten face cord of
stacked wood.
    “Actually, this will only fill it halfway,” I
said.
    He looked skeptical. On my own, it would take
me a week to stack this much wood, re-splitting what I needed to.
Keith had a commercial splitter, so it only did standard cuts for a
wood stove. Having a wood cook stove, my wood requirement was
slightly different. I need smaller, just not shorter, pieces. About
half of this wood would need to be split again. I really didn’t
mind. I felt like I was doing more of the process myself this way.
Of course having a gas log splitter helped a great deal.
    I explained to John about the various sizes
while we sorted through the pile nearest the wood shed, tossing
pieces in that direction. Then we stepped over the wood now inside
the shed and I started lining up hunks of the wood on the floor in
a particular fashion, explaining why as I went.
    “Even though the shed has sides that could
hold the wood in place, I don’t want to put the physical pressure
on the boards. By stacking as if it were a free standing rick, we
get the same amount in, without possible damage to the building.
Last thing we need is a collapsed shed in the middle of winter.” I
showed him how turning the end pieces sideways every other row gave
a stable foundation for the next row, and how by using a piece that
had a flat side kept the wood from rolling. Whole, un-split logs
could be stacked in the middle, not on the ends. It was all very
similar to how we had just done the pallet stacking, only on a
larger scale. There was also a need to pitch the rows slightly
backward, to prevent the row from falling forward. I once had a
stack of wood fall and narrowly missed getting my legs buried in
logs. I had listened to that inner voice and moved out of the way
only seconds before getting crushed.
    Once the area immediately in front of the
shed was cleared of logs, I showed John where the log splitter was,
a big, shiny, red 27-ton splitter. John’s eyes got big, and his
grin got bigger. Men just loved these kinds of toys. We pushed and
pulled it into place, and then I remembered that over at Greg’s was
a handy device for moving things like this around: a ball-to-hitch
caddy. Maybe we’d use it to put it back when we’re done. We worked
for hours, and then called it quits. I was exhausted and my back
ached. I’m sure John was tired too, though he wasn’t admitting
it.
     
    * * *
     
    “Have you been able to replace any of the
stuff we used up this past winter?” John casually asked over
dinner.
    “Not yet. Most of the food we used came from
the garden. I’ll start canning when the garden starts producing.” I
was being nonchalant about it, and I didn’t want to worry him.
Gardens are very iffy things. “I haven’t been to town to see about
the basic staples like flour, rice and pasta.”
    “Is there anything you would do
differently?”
    Even though what I had done all these years
had served all of us very well, there was definitely more I’d like
to do, and the