So long, old woodstove friend ~ June 17, 1999

David Heiller

The woodstove is gone. A neighbor bought it. We moved it onto his trailer last Friday, and it was no easy task.

I had grown attached to the woodstove. On the one hand, it was about as inanimate an object as you could find, steel and brick, and as solid as a tiny Gibraltar. There’s nothing colder than a cold stove.

On the other hand, when that stove was full of oak on a winter night, it was as good a friend as you could ask for. It was the center of our household universe, and it didn’t have to beg for attention.

Malika showing her great strength hauling 
wood for the stove. Noah got stuck
 hauling far more wood than she did,
 but that is the subject for a different column.

Our first dog would lie with her head under the stove. She would get so hot that we thought she might burst into flames. We called her the heat sponge.

My wife, Cindy, wasn’t quite that desperate for heat, but on cold days she would sit as close to the woodstove as humanly possible. Sometimes after her morning shower, she would stand with her back to the stove and steam would rise off her robe like she was on fire.

When company would come in the winter, often someone would comment about how good it felt to stand next to heat of the woodstove. “There’s nothing like a woodstove,” they say. It seemed to bring back a lot of childhood memo­ries, pleasant ones.

We told stories in front of it, lying on the floor and watching the coals shift and glow. Having a fire to focus on is an important ingredient in a good tall tale.

A kettle of water always sat on top, to fill the air with moisture. A whirligig sat there too, made by Red Hansen, He made it from a piece of aluminum and a piece of wire. When the stove top reached a certain temperature, the alumi­num would start to spin.

Sometimes the stove would get too hot. When company came in the winter, I had the bad habit of throwing a piece of wood on at the last minute. It would kick in at about the time we sat down for dinner. The person who sat closest to the stove would slowly turn red and break into a sweat and start shedding clothing. It was pretty fun to watch.

David would open the wood of the woodstove, sit on 
the floor with Collin, and tell stories.
 The woodstove a necessary part of the equation.

I asked a neighbor and friend, Tim Peebles, if he wanted to buy the woodstove. He had often admired its heat, and wished he had one in his house. Yes, he wanted to buy it. We agreed on a price, and he came over on Friday to take it home.

I’m proud to say that the two of us moved it alone. When I first tried to lift it, it wouldn’t budge. It seemed to be attached to the floor. Maybe it didn’t want to leave. It must have weighed 400 pounds. It was unbelievably heavy.

We slid two 2x4 pieces of lumber, eight feet long, under it, and lifted it like we were carrying a stretcher, although when we were done, I felt like I needed a stretcher. Even Tim, who used to play football for a college team in Ohio, had to strain a little. Amidst great groans, we moved it in short hops out of the house. Once it tipped a little, and for a second I thought it would fall and crash through the floor and end up in the basement. But we caught it in time.

To replace the woodstove, we are buying a gas stove. It will sit in the same spot, and will look like a woodstove. I’m glad we have made the change. It will be cleaner and safer, and will require less labor from me. I’ve written about that labor a time or two in this column, how much I loved it, and that’s true enough. But the one thing I don’t have enough of is time, and making 10 cords of firewood a year took a lot of time. It seemed to consume all my free time in the fall. I came to that realization about six months ago, at almost the same time that Cindy did, and we both agreed that it was time to make the switch.

I won’t miss some part of heating with wood, like the dust and dirt and ashes and grit, or the chore of cleaning the chimney. Our son, Noah, will definitely not miss bringing in firewood every day. At least he won’t miss it for a while. I used to have to remind him to fill it properly, to actu­ally fill it and not make a little clubhouse inside it. I predict some day he will look back on that chore with fondness.

I’m glad we have sold the stove to a friend who lives just down the road. He^’s going to get a knock on his door some day this winter, when it’s real cold, and I’m going to walk up to the old woodstove and stretch out my hands and say, “There’s nothing like a woodstove.”

Working like a woodstove ~ November 29, 1990

David Heiller

The woodstove is finally earning its keep at our house, and so are Noah and I.

On Sunday, we stacked about four cords of wood. I did most of the work, but Noah kept a steady pace too for four hours. We stacked wood and listened to the Vikings beat Chicago 41-13, and even took a hot chocolate-peanut butter cookie break. Is there a better way to spend a sunny November afternoon?

Afterward, Noah had to take off his shirt and make me feel his arm muscles. Yup, I said, they feel a little harder, and they did.

The wood stove was, for much of the year, central to our house and family. (Why don't I have any photos of it?) 
Anyway, this is more or less how we
 heated our home for many, many years.

(I must confess that he was also motivated by the dollar I promised if he helped stack the whole pile, and he got his buck.)

We’ve had fires in our Fisher wood stove since September, mostly burning up old elm that feels and heats like cardboard. A stove-full is gone in an hour or so.

But these days, with temperatures in the single digits, you really appreciate that old woodstove.

You come home late at night or after work, and the house has a chill to it that makes you shiver when you take off your coat, which you don’t do until the ritual of lighting the woodstove:

n   Crumple up some newspaper; maybe add a little birch bark and kindling.

n   Strike a match—only ONE match is allowed. Soon you hear snap-crackle-pop that puts Rice Krispίes to shame.

n   Add more wood—the crackling turns to a roar. The smell of smoke trickles into the room. Not the ugly stink of charred homes and tragedy, just the hint of smoke, the kind you smell in a sweater in the summer that reminds you of winter, of birch and pine and oak.

n   Stand over the stove for a few minutes, feeling the heat pulse out like a friendly heart beat, as it reaches slowly for the kitchen and living room and through the ceiling register to the kids’ rooms upstairs.

In the morning, the kids carry their clothes down from their bedrooms and get dressed in front of the stove. I button my shirt there too. It’s a friendly spot, in front of a woodstove.

In fact, there’s nothing friendlier than a woodstove when it’s earning its keep. The colder the days, the friendlier the stove.

I like to burn wood for a lot of reasons that could list out here in logical fashion. But that would seem pretty silly, because I suspect the main reason is the simple Boy Scout joy of lighting a fire.

But here are two anyway:

1.      Heating with wood is a lot of work: cutting and hauling and splitting and stacking and carrying all that wood. Sometimes I dread the thought of it, especially when it’s the first of September and I realize that I don’t have enough wood for the winter, and I think of all the work that lies ahead. It creates a primitive fear that I won’t have enough firewood for the winter, and Cindy and the kids may freeze to death because of my careless sloth. But I like that fear. It makes me think and plan and feel proud and, yes, work.

2.      And once that work starts, I’m thankful in a perverse way. My back hurts at first, and my arms ache a little. But soon I feel my arm and back muscles tighten, like they do every fall. I start to feel a bit more in touch with my body, a bit more in shape, a bit younger.

But not as young as Noah. Although sometimes I still take off my shirt and feel my arm muscles.

A wood pile time bomb ~ October 8, 1992

David Heiller

The time bomb is set to explode at our house. It’s doesn’t look like a time bomb. It looks like a woodpile.

But because the woodpile will fall down, I think of it as a time bomb.

David and his maul: the never ending battle to keep the wood box full.

Hopefully no one will get hurt. My woodpile fell last spring while I was on a canoe trip. It covered three bicycles, a garden tractor, and a compost shredder. I had to buy a new front rim for Noah’s bike. But it didn’t crush my children or wife, thankfully.

It took a year for that woodpile to fall down. That was a long stretch. I remember once when my brother-in-law and I spent the day stacking wood. He had to go back to college that afternoon, so I drove him to Moose Lake to catch a bus. I drove home thinking how great it was to have a brother-in-law like Randy, what a great job we had done stacking wood together.

When I drove into the driveway, the woodpile looked like someone had shot a cannon through it. Half an hour, an unofficial Guiness World Record for a fallen woodpile.

Our woodpile never ever looked like this one!
 I wouldn't want to use it!

There’s nothing like the sight of a sprawling, fallen woodpile to deflate your spirit. You work so hard to get to that point. Risk life and limb cutting down the tree and cutting up the wood. Drive the tractor into the woods, load the wood into the trailer, drive the tractor home, unload it, split it, all the while listening to your lower back do the Rice Krispie Shuffle: snap, crackle and pop.

Stacking it is the final reward. You get to make it look so nice and neat. Maybe you even crisscross the ends so that it stands without any posts. That’s the sign of a good wood stacker.

I plod along slowly, pulling at the pile every few minutes, feeling it start to sway a little at the bottom, feeling it tilt even more as it gets higher.

I can tell a woodpile that will fall. The one I stacked today will fall real quick. If you push against it, it sways and creaks. Unless we get some cold weather real fast, I’ll have a bunch of birch logs to pick up soon.

Cindy came out while I was stacking it up. She gently reminded me to move her bicycle away from the 8-foot-high pile. She knows my wood-stacking skills are low.

Cindy on the other hand is a great wood stacker. When we used to stack wood together, she was always rearranging sticks here and there, tightening things up, and the pile would be as solid as a wall.

But she threw out her back two years ago. Now she won’t go near a woodpile. (Or else she hasn’t forgiven me for conking her on the jaw with a piece of popple. One bad throw.) But she still knows she has woodpile superiority. I think she gets a perverse pleasure seeing mine fall. She even calls her friends and tells them. Last spring, about a week after the canoe trip, a friend asked me with a smirk how my woodpile was doing.

“Geez, does the whole township know?” I asked. That reminded me that the only thing worse than a fallen woodpile is someone asking you about it.

Time bombs are like that.

Getting control of the Firewood Supply ~ November 2, 1995

David Heiller

We’ve had a lot of wet weather lately, which has me worried about our Firewood Supply.

Firewood Supply is capitalized because it is a serious subject when you heat with wood.

Most people have their Firewood Supply under control at this point in the year. In fact the true old timer is working on his Firewood Supply for next year, or even 1997, right about now. Maybe someday I’ll be at that point. But things always seem to get in the way, like football games and gardening and an emergency or two.

"Argg"!

So I’m crossing my fingers that we’ll get a cold snap and the rain will cease and the ground will harden and everything will work out fine, like it always does.

In preparation for those perfect conditions, I spent part of Saturday and Sunday in the woods wearing knee-high rubber boots, cutting and splitting several cords of basswood, maple, and red oak.

Two companions helped the time go faster.

On Saturday I worked with the company of our Australian shepherd, Mackenzie. She is a faithful dog. She and our other dog, Ida, walked out with me. Ida split for home after a few minutes, but Mac sat down about 30 feet away and for four hours watched me work.

Kenzie patiently waits,
always alert to any change of plans.

When I would stop for a break and shut off the saw, I would call her over and she would gratefully come, her whole hind end wagging, and we would talk and hug for a few seconds. It’s a good feeling, having a loyal dog like that. It puts a bright spot on what is often a cold and dreary job.

So does working with your son. I asked Noah to help me on Sunday. He came reluctantly. He would rather have spent his time strutting around the yard wearing his football shoulder pads and flexing his muscles and pretending he was John Randle.

His job was to stand the stove-length logs upright, and to split them if he could. If he couldn’t, then at least the logs would be ready for me to split. That saves some bending for me. His 12-year-old back has a few more bends in it than mine. If there is one job that will give you a stiff back, it is splitting wood.

Noah had trouble splitting the green maple. The axe got tangled in the underbrush more than once, and I heard him grumble about it. He is discovering that underbrush is the mortal enemy of making firewood. It nicks your cheeks, catches your saw, steals your hat, and trips your feet.

Dad's worthy assistant.

He did better splitting the oak. When he got tired of standing the wood upright and splitting, he did some tossing.

Tossing a piece of wood gives you a good feeling, especially when you are frustrated with the underbrush. You give a grunt and toss that hunk with an “Aargh!” and you feel better. Don’t ask me why.

At first Noah worked quietly, and when he is quiet, he is not happy. I watched his frustration with trying to split some tough logs. But as the jobs progressed, as he split and tossed and stacked and patiently fought the underbrush, his attitude changed.

He started to feel his body work, his back, his forearms, his triceps and biceps and all those other muscles that he knows by name.

You get a workout making firewood. It’s a hard job. But once you get into the rhythm of the job, you start to feel pretty good.

Then he started talking about the Vikings, and about how this work was helping his muscles and I knew he was doing fine. He talked and I listened. Once in a while I would say “Yeah?” or “Right!” and that was all I needed to say.

He’s going to help me again next Saturday. Mackenzie will too. Then we’ll get the Firewood Supply under control, if the good Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise.

Bringing in firewood brings good thoughts ~ December 5, 2002

David Heiller

“Would you mind helping me in the woods?” I asked my son on Sunday morning.

“Yeah, I suppose,” he answered enthusiastically. He knew it was a rhetorical question.

He sat in the back of the trailer as Ι drove the Oliver 66 to the firewood that I had piled along the trail.

The first pile was some big chunks of ash. “Let’s split them first,” I said. “They’ll dry better.

We tackled that job with a double-bitted ax and a Monster Maul that I bought about 20 years ago. The Monster Maul came with a lifetime guarantee, which impressed me at the time. I remember telling Cindy, after seeing the ad in the Mother Earth News, “Hey, how can we go wrong? If it ever breaks, we can get a new one for free.”

And it is indestructible. That was the good news. The bad news is that you have to be a pro football player on steroids to swing it for more than two minutes at a time. It is heavy.

Noah and I discovered that as we tried to split the ash. We did it, but our arms felt like used sticks of chewing gum.

The ax wasn’t much better, Noah informed me. “The handle is cracked!” he said with distaste.

“Fine, just throw the wood in as it is,” I replied. “We can split it in the yard.”

By this time I was having trouble breathing. I get asthma when I exercise, or when it’s cold outside, and both factors were hitting me hard. I sounded like Darth Vader as I loaded the big hunks of wood on the trailer.

It’s a very unpleasant feeling, not being able to catch your breath. I remember as a child seeing my mother hunched over, laboring to breath. It was scary. Now the chickens have come home to roost with me.

Still, I plugged away. I didn’t want to let a 19-year-old boy show me up. We moved up to the next pile, a big sugar maple that had split from a fellow tree. They had been joined at the base like Siamese Twins, which was a weakness that doomed one of them. Cindy had always favored this tree during syrup season, because produced so well. It could hold four buckets, it, was so big. Then it split and half of it was going into the trailer. I should have cut it up a year ago, but I put it off. We heat with propane now and all we need firewood for now is the sauna and making maple syrup and an occasional campfire. It was good to think that the tree would be put to good use one last time.

With Noah walking ahead, I drove back to the yard with the full trailer, then we unloaded it. We talked about important things while worked, like the upcoming Vikings-Falcon football game. Hey, you’d don’t have to have profound conversations in order for them tο be meaningful.

Noah and David

That’s one thing I miss about making fire-wood: it gave me an excuse to work with the kids. I like to think it was good for Noah, having to split wood and keep the woodbox filled. I don’t think he would agree, at least at this point in his life.

There’s a lot that can be said about making firewood. It’s a fairly simple job, but one that: can give you a glimpse of some important things in life. Hard work (even if it brings οn a little asthma). Making sure things don’t go to waste. Working with your kids. I was reminded of that last Sunday, and I’m thankful for that.