One year after Monica settled into her Wanamingo farm, Claudia and her husband joined her there. (Claudia’s husband passed about one year later.) Monica would be in charge of the livestock (Claudia would help); Claudia would be in charge of the gardens and firewood (Monica would help). Both continued teaching: Monica in Apple Valley, Claudia as a substitute teacher in several neighboring school districts.
The previous winter had been long and cold (as winters in Minnesota are), but Monica had become comfortable running the downstairs fireplace 24/7. On warm days, Monica and the grandkids used the ATV and trailer to bring in load after load of firewood, filling the basement floor around the fireplace, hoping not to run out before the next nice day. Monica regularly checked the electric baseboard registers – seldom did they feel warm. That first winter, Monica’s highest electric bill was $280 – a fabulous improvement of the feared $700 the previous owner had mentioned!
But Claudia was the expert on heating with wood. She could identify the different tree species (summer or winter) and knew their BTU capacities. Claudia was very particular about the firewood’s dryness (both interior and surface moisture), and began stacking wood in a two-year rotation. She refused to run the chainsaw (which was fine with Monica, because she thought it was a lot of fun!), but Claudia was an ace at finding deadfall, hauling it to the house, using the hydraulic splitter, and stacking it. (Claudia loves stacking wood! She claims it’s a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.) Current year firewood was stacked in the pole barn – one area for kindling, another area for autumn / spring fires, and another for “rocket fuel” which would be saved for the coldest January and February nights. All the stacks were easily accessible and very stable (many years ago Claudia had learned to keep the firewood stacks from collapsing onto the cats while they inevitably climbed to the top).
They say that heating with wood heats you more than once. Monica’s overgrown woods had a lot of deadfall; felling trees was unnecessary in the first few years unless the ATV trail needed to go through. But (in the warm days of August and September – before the temperature dropped and the house needed to be heated) the deadfall had to be cut into fireplace-sized logs, carried to and lifted into the trailer, lifted out of the trailer (back at the pole barn), lifted onto the hydraulic splitter, tossed into ever-growing piles on the ground, then lifted one more time to be stacked. (Handling count: seven times). To keep the homefires burning, the firewood had to be loaded back into the trailer, driven to and then carried into the house, placed in stacks, and – eventually – loaded into the fireplace. (Handling count: four more times). So firewood heats you a minimum of 11 times, not counting burning it in the fireplace.
Occasionally, over the 20+ years that Claudia and Monica had been heating their homes with firewood, someone would claim burning firewood pollutes the environment. Not true. Anything that rots (meat, autumn leaves, dead trees) creates gasses, including carbon dioxide gas. Leaving a log to rot on the ground creates just as much carbon dioxide as burning that same log in the fireplace. Actually, burning a log releases just as much carbon dioxide into the air as the photosynthesis and carbon dioxide it took in to grow that log in the first place. If a forest is sustainably managed, burning firewood to heat one’s home is carbon neutral. (And the newer wood stoves practically eliminate any soot that might escape into the atmosphere.) According to Jim Bowyer, professor emeritus from the University of Minnesota, there is no environmental reason not to use the wood on your property as a source of energy. (Source: Climate Curious: Is burning wood for heat carbon neutral, Elizabeth Dunbar, MPSNews November 9, 2019)
Claudia does not like garages. Yes, silly. She hadn’t had one for years and learned to cover her windshield with a tarp for no hassle snow removal before driving. But she still did need a shelter for the car and we needed a better spot for wood. This time getting the building permit for a farm structure was easy. No big hoops to jump through with the county. The building would hold whatever machines it needed, including cars, and we had a specific area set aside for five cords of wood.
Before we knew it, fall had arrived and so did the school year. Monica was off every day to Apple Valley to teach fifth grade; Claudia was substitute teaching at the various high schools in the area. The chickens were happily laying eggs in the insulated coop, the cattle and goats got along great across their shared fences. A few big square bales were in the barn for the goats when it snowed (goats hate precipitation; who knew?). The dog was still enjoying the farm (and after killing only 2 chickens learned to leave them alone). The only drama was between the cats: Claudia’s cats did not like the upstairs neighbors at all (human, canine or feline), and the feeling was mutual. Everyone had settled into a comfortable routine.
But the days were getting shorter and colder. Caring for the goats was getting more difficult. The goats were mature, and had been purchased for meat. When Christmas break came Monica decided it was time to take the goats to freezer camp before the new year. Monica didn’t have a livestock trailer, but did have an older, somewhat decrepit minivan. It had worked to bring the kids home, now it would suffice to bring them to the butcher. Ten or so days later we picked up the boxes of meat. Those goats were loved TWICE!
