• Tuesday-What'sUP October 24 - 07:52 pm

Kathy Jennings has a timely reminder for folks who burn wood to warm their homes during the winter months to come. This pile seems to be laced with some colorful leaves yet and in need of stacking. The second picture from Tom Cook is a good reminder too, since here in the U.P., we're waking up to frosty mornings like this more often this time of year. The scene itself is pretty, but I'm in no hurry to see that on a regular basis and even though I love the smell of a wood fire burning on a cold winter's night, I wouldn't mind holding off on that for a while too!

Absolutely beautiful!

According to pasty.net this morning it is 35 degrees in Keweenaw Land. Wonder if any frost there this morning?

Kathy & Tom, very nice pictures, I can see a nice Buck walking out in the bottom pic, well at least in my mind.

Looks like he's smelling the flowers!

Good Morning. RD, we have ice on our auto windshields this morning.

Very nice pictures indeed! We haven't had frost yet. Our flowers are still blooming and we're still getting tomatoes. I can handle that.

Llamamama, long time no hear.

I think I see my Christmas Tree in that second picture there? I have first dibs on the tall skinny one in the middle. (waving hand) Thank you for the pics!

Now let's see a photo of that wood - split and stacked neatly......

Morning All! We have frost here this morning in eastern Iowa! So long flys, gnats, skeeters, spiders, etc.!

Down here in the swamps of Menominee it was cool enough this A.M. to fire up that nice wood stove.
The thing about wood is it warms you three times over. Once when you cut it, when you haul it and when you burn it. FALL is definitely here and winter is just around the corner. The comforts of that nice chair in front of that fire with a warm drink is ulitimate.

I have fond memories of my family of 4 hopping in the truck and going out to make wood. We would make a day out of it, picnic and all. The air would be crisp and all the leaves would carpet the forest floor. Quite a beautiful sight to see.

I like the autumn leaves mixed in with the log pile. I get nervous looking at that log pile, though, since it is stacked so haphazardly. It reminds me of the big accident with the stacking of the log pile for Texas A&M's big bon fire a few years ago, where several people were crushed to death, and some are permanently disabled from the unexpected collapse of the pile. Granted, that pile was undoubted larger and with longer logs, but the principle is the same. :-) Log piles are great if they are properly stacked. (Sorry, I had safety drummed into my head by my employer, and that indoctrination will last a life time for me.) Thank you for the pictures today, Mary and all.

I have a story.... Last year my family and I were visiting with some new friends here in Lower Michigan. The topic came up of how our homes were heated when we were growing up. I grew up in the Copper Country, and explained that we had an oil furnace, and that my dad later added a woodstove. I told of how we would go out and "make wood." This was met with blank stares, and the wife finally said, oh, you mean chop wood? I just smiled and said yes. I had forgotten where I was at that moment. Thanks for the memories of "making wood." It was hard but satisfying work.

we could use dat wood at da camp..... im remain walter p

I love the smell of a wood fire.

I remember the days when the hay barn at the Aittama farm was full of wood in a huge pile instead of hay! Us kids would climb to the top to reach the trap door that would take us into the attic of the oat house...and to the trap door in the floor to get down into the main floor of the oat house.....then out the back door on our way to the potato warehouse! Great way to ditch the little brother! Then Gram would come out and make us haul some wood in to fill the wood box in the kitchen because she used that wood cook stove year round! Sadly I heard recently from my Uncle that the new owners of the farm demolished all the old buildings...I don't think I will ever want to drive by there again now :-(

The first picture is similar to what you see when you drive through Williamston where the tornado struck last Thursday evening and the cleanup of all the downed trees continues.
Actually Brownmoose I think it warms you 4 times, also when you carry out the ashes!!

Oh yea there was frost this morning.

kinda strange, just up the hill in Hubbell
I had frost, cleaned window and drove down
the hill to Highway, about 1/2 way down I
must have hit the dew point, as I flashed
fog inside all the windows instantly...

stopped dead in middle of road couldnt see a thing.

I grew up on a farm in the thumb. We had a 5 acre woods in the middle of 160 acres of farmland. Houses in our family had oil furnaces with supplemental wood stoves. Most winter weekends Dad and I (and sometimes Grandpa) would head into the woods to cut wood. We mostly cleaned up deadfall, but every now and then we'd bring down a tree. In the "early days" (1970's) we had an old Oliver RC-70 tractor with a side pulley, and an old flat belt that drove a buzz saw. I can still hear that saw "sing" as it came up to speed and sliced into the wood! Limbs would get brushed out then cut into manageable lengths and dragged up to the buzz pile, then we'd buzz it into blocks which would get tossed on a pile, then later the blocks would be split with an axe and the final product hauled up to the house where it was piled and dried for a year before being burned the following winter. After the "70" gasped it's last we got a pulley assembly for the PTO on an old Farmall "A". That's still around today. The final upgrade was a PTO driven "screw" woodsplitter hanging on the back of an Oliver 77. You still had to haul and buzz limbs into blocks, but the mechanical splitter was a lot easier on the back than the axe, let me tell you!

Brownmoose (or anyone), what would that warm drink be? A "hot toddy"? Mulled cider? A cup of coffee or tea or hot chocolate? With a Maine Coon cat curled up on your lap, what a pleasant thought.

I prefer a cup of Joe. But my ex-mother in law would dissolve a peppermint candy in a cup of hot water at the first sight of snowflakes every year. A ritual she learned from her Grandmother. She would get this angelic look to her face when ever she would recall this event. It is these pleasant memories, I think, that keeps us young at heart. Much like the snowflakes on the tongue.

Well Matt I guess it would depend on what time of day it was and the mood you were in!! Could even depend on how deep the snow was...and if it were snowing...the prediction in the forecast for that white stuff to either stop... or start falling. So many variables to the story.

My Grandma had a tiny little wood stove in her kitchen. She had a box full of "kindling" setting on the floor between that stove & the big electric stove. She used the kindling keep the little stove going.
I also remember another use for the kindling when us kids were being BAD. HaHa Does anyone else remember that? Ha

My hubby is piling wood today. We use wood heat as an extra source of heat. I bet more & more are starting to do this.

We do the wood thing down here in Trolland also. (bottom of the thumb) Out here in the "boonies" we have a perfectly good Propane forced air furnace but ye-gads it doesn't get used much with the prices as such! It always bothers me to see so much perfectly good wood from storm damage, developers clearing lots etc. just bulldozed up into a pile and burned, or thrown in a landfill, or just chipped up!

I worry more about chain saw kickback or getting zinged by one rather then a 4 foot pile falling on me!

The "good ol boys" down south think us "Yankees" are frivolous stacking our firewood so neatly! Down there they just throw it all in a huge conical pile!

Someone mentioned here about our sendentary lifes keeping us out of shape. There is an adage that says most people nowadays "rust out" rather then "wear out"! I must say after 28 years of cutting, splitting, stacking firewood I'm tending to be worn out! Even with our 8 horse logsplitter one really has sore shoulders, back etc. at days end!

Russ Emmons, St. Clair county

img11gbh

My great aunt had a not so tiny corn cob stove, in the corner of her kitchen, that was her sole fuel source for cooking food in her home, until she went into a nursing home (they used to call them rest homes or old peoples' homes), back in the late 1980's, believe it or not. She was in her 90's at the time. She was a wonderful, tiny lady, who would not hesitate to put anyone in their place, no matter who they were, if she felt they had wronged someone.

I don't have a picture because my camera has been broke, but I just have to say I have been truly blessed this firewood season. I had a bit of an accident in April that required some reconstructive surgery on my shoulder on October 19th, so I knew I had to have all of my firewood for the year cut before then. With medical bills this year there was no way we could afford gas. I said a prayer that god help me get over the pain and get my house winterized and all my wood cut and the next day a friend called me up and told me he thought God wanted him to help me cut wood. Between the two of us we cut firewood so quickly I never would have believed it, and then with a six foot wide by 40' long by 8' tall pile of wood in my yard several men at my church spent the day helping me cut it to 2' lengths and stack it. There was a lot of other individuals who seemed to come out of nowhere and help me. I am so greatful and thankful for individuals like this and have learned to realize that there is so much opportunity to give and help in this world.

Surgery went well, in fact the only real surprise is that my shoulder hurts less after the procedure than before, and I am not taking any pain medicine. thank God :)

That's great to hear you had help coming out of the woodwork, as it were Nate! Not so good that you've joined the ranks of the one-handed typists though. Seems as if there's getting to be quite the fraternity of shoulder patients lately. Mr. Deb

There is nothing in this world better than "free heat". Free meaning, days of hard work cranking that chain saw, moving the wood, splitting the wood, moving it again and again. But sitting in front of that "free" heat is like a squirrel storing up for the long, cold and snowy winter. Only this squirrel is going to be sipping a well-deserved, warm drink with the "cure-all", hot rum. Got a fire going as we speak. Ahoy, maties!

Nate, I'm so happy that somebody helped you. There is so much good out there. Too bad all we hear about are the people who cause trouble. Sigh...

Great pile of wood Russ.I realy miss comming out to your place and visiting with you and Syl.Sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee,having great conversation.Can you belive it's been 22 years?.I have seen you make wood piles,and pitched in a time or two,but what I enjoyed alot is getting some firewood from off your pile there for camping.You always gave me some good logs for my campfire where the others would come over and tell me how good my fire smelled. Thanks.

Nate--Good for you! It always brings tears to my eyes when I hear about generous and kind people. It's sad that it's headline news, though, and not the norm. It only takes a second to do something nice for someone and the pay-off lasts a lifetime. When we were kids we had a wood stove to heat the house and by morning it could be a little chilly in the house so we used to hang our clothes over the oven door to warm before we put them on in the morning before school.

I really enjoy splitting wood. It is my time, to be alone, get some exercise, and satisfaction. Clears my head. Stacking it neatly is part of it all. And it doesn't get any better than a nice cozy fire on a bad weather day....

Running the chainsaw however is what hurts my back!

BTW--- I forgot to ask--- In Finland, wood piles like these shown are called a "Mootii"? Muytii? pronounced Mootee? Transalates to a "measure of wood" (or firewood) Someone help me out here please. Pronuciation? Spelling? Thanks!

When my husband couldn't finish cutting a huge pile of oak logs, a man and his wife from our church came over and cut it for us. Sometimes they would sneak over when we were gone. Wow, we were so thankful. Last spring I used our woodsplitter to split it. Now that the weather has cooled off I get to do the fun part. Stacking it. I love to stack firewood!