Wood For the Winter

Soon we will be entering new terrain here at EM. Since moving here and starting EM in July of 2022, we’ve not spent a full winter here in the woods, so this coming winter will be our first full go.

In 2022, we headed south in mid-October and returned home in mid-April of 2023. In 2023 - when I started taking better notes - we headed south on November 17 and returned home on March 19, 2024. And last year we headed south on November 9, 2024 and returned home earlier this year on February 19, 2025. And this year we’re just gonna stay right on through. So starting on November 18, we’ll be in fresh new EM territory as far as our time here goes, since Nov 17 is the latest in the year we’ve been on site.

We managed to cross off two things from our things-to-do-before-the-snow-flies front over the past week, which felt like two big wins: we took down our large canvas tent that’s been up since the summer and we had a cord of wood delivered for use in our wood stove, which is our sole source of heat.

*Mike found a clever way to drape the bottom of the tent up in hopes of it drying out instead of touching the wet ground*

Here’s what I learned from taking down our large 16X24 canvas tent, which we situated up in Morning Sun meadow: next year we need to take it down way sooner in the season. We purchased the tent off Craigslist a couple of years ago so we’d have an indoor-ish space to possibly host and hold events in, especially during the spring and fall when gathering outdoors can be chilly and challenging weather wise. Thus far we’ve been using it as a rain plan during our camping retreats we’ve been offering in the summer. And it came in handy this past August during our retreat when we had an afternoon drizzle. Due to the very wet fall we’ve had, timing the take down of the tent was a real challenge. We were doing our best not to put the tent away wet, but the canvas was having trouble drying out. Then the huge tarp we covered it with blew off and the tent was saturated again. So then we re-tarped it to keep it from continuing to get wet and then had to wait for it to dry out again. Then the tent decided it would be a good idea to fully collapse. Oh dear. We put it back up on as dry of a 2-day stretch as we were going to get and hoped for the best. It managed to dry out pretty well before we took it down and wrapped it all up to store for the winter. We didn’t plan for that to be such an adventure! But that’s often how life-adventures go, isn’t it? They’re unplanned and unexpected.

The wood delivery, on the other hand, went smooth as silk. I texted our neighbor from just down the road who sells firewood and the next day a fresh shipment of firewood arrived in our driveway. The hardest part of the wood delivery was when he texted back asking if we wanted lodgepole pine or fir. Since I didn’t expect there to be options to choose from, nor did I know why it mattered, I texted Mike, who was working off site at the time, and in short order learned we wanted fir, because it burns better. So I let the guy know and that was that.

Having the wood delivered was, however, simply the first step. Next came moving the wood from where it was dropped off and restacking it under two different partially covered storage places we now have set up, which we finished yesterday afternoon. The last step is the most time-consuming one. Now we have to chop all of the wood into smaller pieces in order to make use of them in our small cabin’s small wood stove. We plan on tending to the chopping bit by bit, so it will be a weekly activity all winter long I reckon, which seems fine by me. Chopping wood with an axe is a new activity for me and now that I’ve gotten a fair amount of practice at it, I have found that I really enjoy it. It’s satisfying work and a good workout. And at the end of a chopping session you have firewood that keeps you wonderfully warm inside your dwelling place as a bonus.

Given the smallness of our cabin - 12X14 - and how well-insulated Mike built it, it does not take much wood to heat the cabin. We average two small fires a day when the temps are in the 20’s and 30’s outside. One in the morning and another one at night before we go to bed. We’ll see how we do when the temps get really cold this winter, but I don’t anticipate too much changing. We’ll also see if one cord of wood - which clocks in when stacked at 4X4X8 - will last us through the whole of the winter or not. Only time will tell.

Just in case you’re wondering: Why don’t they just collect wood from around where they live to burn over the winter instead of buying it? Don’t they LIVE in the woods? I’ll tell you. It’s a lot of work to find, haul, and gather enough wood to last through the winter months and our plates are full enough right now. We have enough things to tend to and we are prioritizing other projects. Both of us are also working jobs for pay right now. Turns out, there’s only so much time in the day. So we gave our self the gift of having someone else deliver us some wood, at least for this coming winter. A decision well made!

First Snow