Annual Festival Of wood

So. How does a sophisticated New Yorker – like me, wind up gleefully chucking multiple cords of wood into stacks for burning in his wood stove? I, who as a child, never even touched a thermostat? An apartment dweller in a large apartment house? It was a gradual submission to life in New England.

I seriously began cutting and splitting wood for my wife’s elderly grandmother. She lived in an 18th-century house that had been built before the word insulation had been coined. For Grandma, I cut, split, and stacked about seven cords a year. The year of Katrina, we purchased the house we currently own, and my first act was to install a wood stove. Being older, I began buying my wood cut and split, but I still had to stack. I decided to call the annual event, The Festival of Wood. I invited friends, neighbors, and family to join the festival: free beverages and pizza. They all thought the drinks and pizza part was fantastic, but I was the one stacking the six cords of wood.

This attitude, I don’t understand. Wood stacking is a beautiful fall activity. The days are getting cooler, the leaves start turning, and your mind turns to days snug in front of the fire while the gale howls outside. 

I have found that neighbors seek to “borrow” wood when the power goes out, and their heat is non-existent, and that family cheerfully visit on snowy days, stuff themselves with goodies, and hog the fire. But, stack wood? Nope.

So I am going to go the cross fit route. I will charge for supervising wood hauling and stacking exercise sessions. You have to use arm, shoulder, hand, legs – all your body to do this. I’ll coach – ” you call that a stack?” then I’ll topple it, and they’ll start over. For this, I’ll quadruple what my wood guy charges me for the wood, and add the “coaching fees” on top. Now I can afford the vacation to someplace warm in February and to hell with filling the stove.