Chopping Firewood

When we moved into this house, one improvement I insisted on was installing a new wood-burning stove. 

We had a wood stove at our old house, and I loved it so much.  Whenever the power went out, we could stay cozy in that house with a roaring fire in the stove.  I even cooked on that thing when the power was out!  Having a fire going also makes the entire house instantly more cozy, and there is no better way to destroy the junk mail that you don't want to throw away because it has your name all over it.  

After three years of living in this house (I can't believe we moved in three years ago now), the power amazingly hasn't gone out once.  Our old house would get several outages each year, but this house didn't even lose power when we get hit by a bomb cyclone.  Even though we may not need it for power outages, we are cleaning out the pipe on the stove and preparing to use it more regularly this winter.

My parents also live in the mountains, and one of the big trees on their property fell down last year.  It's been sitting in the field, getting nice and dried out all this time.  I asked my dad if we could have it for firewood, and he said sure, we could come chop it up once he was done haying for the year.  I think it's going to be a mutually beneficial arrangement - he doesn't have to deal with the tree himself, and we get free firewood.

So a week ago, we spent an afternoon at my parent's house, in the crisp fall air, chopping up a tree and clearing out the dead branches.  The aspen leaves were reaching the peak of fall color in the mountains last weekend, and they aren't just yellow this year, but orange and red too.  My sister was also there with her kids, and all the cousins were running all over the property, crashing through the woods, and coming up with schemes to build boats and teepees with the branches we were cutting down.  

When I was growing up, fall wasn't just about sitting inside by a cozy fire (though I clearly love that).  We spent a lot of the fall outside, whether it was helping my parents pick up hay bales, going on a couple last horseback rides before the snow, cutting down trees so my dad could build spec homes over the winter, or hiking through the woods during hunting season.  

As an adult I've had less practical reasons to spend time working outside in the fall, but spending a day cutting up fire wood was really refreshing.  I felt like I was making the most of fall, getting outside and enjoying nature and the cool air while working with my hands on something that would benefit my family, just like we did every autumn growing up.  

Anyway, I wanted to share a few pictures I snapped while we worked.  It was such a gorgeous, satisfying, happy fall day.

We got a lot more firewood than this, but we have to go back and finish the tree in the next couple weeks!