The FeDibblety family

the wooden sled

Today I spent some time doing one of my favorite chores — splitting wood. I am still enjoying the whole process of heating with wood. I feel like I am continually getting better at regulating the temperature, which I also like. Unfortunately we haven’t had the time to get really nicely seasoned wood. Some of the wood we have seems to be pretty dry and solid. We also have a fair amount on both sides on ideal though — some is a bit punky, while some is still a bit green. As you can see in the house picture below, the smoke is a bit on the thick side, indicating that the wood is a bit green (which means more creosote build-up, and me having to clean the chimney (I haven’t done that one yet)). Of course, like anyone else who has ever heated with wood, I worry whether I have cut enough to last the winter. Or rather, whether I have enough wood in the wood rack. I have actually cut a bunch of wood up by the pond which I have yet to haul down. The hauling is certainly the worst part in my opinion. Cutting, splitting, stacking, and burning is fun, but I do not enjoy the hauling part. This is probably because there is a pretty big hill to get up to the area where I have cut the wood. Fortunately the way there is uphill, meaning that the way back (with a wheelbarrow full of wood) is downhill. Going downhill with a full wheelbarrow is certainly better than going uphill, but it still takes quite a bit of effort to keep the wheelbarrow from going out of control.

Backside of the snowy house, with some smoke coming out of the chimney

A couple weeks ago, I bought a new fuel cap for the chainsaw, because the old one was getting pretty stripped (there is a notch in the middle of the cap for you to tighten it with a screwdriver). While I was at the tractor store, I decided to buy a spare chain as well, since we only had one. So, I was eager to try out the new chain, and cut up some more fallen trees. But of course, I did not manage to haul down all the wood I had cut. Today I woke up to a good 2-3 inches of snow on the ground. I contemplated taking the wheelbarrow up to get more wood, but I thought it would be too slippery. Instead I decided to try hauling some down on a sled. This ended up working out pretty well. I tried letting the sled go down by itself, which worked well until it got to the part where it needed to make a turn, and it crashed into some brush, and all the wood fell out. But the sled didn’t break! So I loaded it back up, pulled it to the next hill (right by the pond), and this time decided to sit on top of the wood. This worked out even better, as I could use my boots to steer and brake pretty well. I did get quite a bit of snow up my pants from the braking and steering though, so I decided that I had had my fun for the day, and that I should go back inside to enjoy the warmth that the fire was providing. I also took a few more pictures while I was outside. It was a really beautiful day.

The creek is still flowing well

A small waterfall near the bridge over the creek

The backyard

Friday we woke up to a think blanket of snow. Just thought we would like to share some photos of our first snowy scene here together. Hopefully we will get some more snow soon, so we can try out our sleds down the hill by the pond.

Brick Patio in front

The cabin

The front yard

I just fixed the lamp in the kitchen. When I say fixed, I mean that a month ago, changing the bulb didn’t work to restore the light that should come on when a switch is flipped. This was not surprising because the fixture had a long, slow death, taking tens of minutes to come on in the morning at the end. We had an electrician out to fix the wire that I ran over with a lawn mower this summer (oops). He also looked at the light and said the ballast was probably dead. I got a new fixture last week and tonight I wired it up. The kitchen is much brighter now. And Rob seems impressed that light comes immediately on when he flips the switch.

Rob has been enjoying heating with wood. Unlike when I was growing up, the house now has an HVAC system, so if he decided it wasn’t so fun, we could flip a switch and be warm. But the heat from the furnace isn’t as good as wood heat somehow. It’s too dry and doesn’t smell as good and makes weird noises in the middle of the night. Rob gets up early Saturday morning to go collect and chop wood. He sometimes literally can’t wait to get out of the house. He claims it is in the name of exercise, but I’m pretty sure he enjoys it.

According to him, we keep the house in the mid-60’s. He monitors the temperature in each room several times a day. I seem to like it slightly colder than he does. The upstairs is warmer than the downstairs. The living room heats up quite a bit on sunny days (due to the parents eco-friendly design), but Indiana has plenty of cloudy days as well. That’s when it helps to have wood heat.

new grass where we had thought we would put an herb garden

A couple months ago I decided to plant some new grass in a couple areas around the house. I was considering buying some ecolawn, which I read about on the internet. It claimed to be a really environmentally friendly grass, in that it required very little mowing and watering. This sounded ideal to me. I ordered a 5 lb. bag for $30 (+ $15 for shipping & handling), then waited. And waited. After 12 days, I decided to contact them. I e-mailed them, and they replied promptly saying, “the credit card information you gave was not valid.” I was underwhelmed by their customer service to say the least. I gave up on them and decided to simply buy some grass seed at Pell’s, one of the local hardware stores in town. They offer a variety of different seeds in bulk, including grass seed. I got 2 pounds of “shady turf”, which was a blend with primarily fescue, which is what the ecolawn claimed to be. I also got 5 lbs of their general mixture. The shady turf was about $3 pound, and the normal blend was about $2 per pound, for a total of about $16, much less than what I would have paid for the ecolawn. I put the shady turf around the deck, where I had cleared out a bunch of brush. I ended up running out of it and switched to the general mix. I also planted some in some bare spots elsewhere in the yard, and ended up buying more seed a couple times before the end of the season.

close-up of new grass about one week after planting

I have planted grass elsewhere, and it seems that anywhere from 25%-50% success rate per seed is not bad, but I would have to say that I got more like 75% here. This ground is really fertile! It probably isn’t that impressive in the grand scheme of things, but it makes me happy.

grass around the deck

close-up of grass around the deck about 2 weeks after planting

woodpile in April – after a bit of cleaning up

Last weekend Dave came out to visit. We made a long list of projects, and accomplished quite a few of them. The main project that I was really hoping he could work on was installing some new ducts to the wood stove. When Clare was growing up, they heated solely with wood, and had ducts from the wood stove going to most of the rooms in the house. When they decided to move and rent the house, Dave and Ellen figured that most renters would not want to heat with wood, so they hired their good friend and neighbor Louis Fender to install a furnace and air conditioner. When Louis put in the new furnace, he disconnected some of the ducts to the wood stove, since they weren’t being used. Now that Clare and I are trying our hand at homesteading, we decided that we would like to try to heat with wood as well. Thus we asked Dave to put in some new ducts.

partially cut down fallen oak up past the pond

Actually, Dave wanted to do this in June when we were moving in, but I told him at the time that it wasn’t a top priority, which it didn’t seem like it was in June. I also thought it would be a pretty big project, and the house was pretty crowded in June with all of us (Clare, Rob, Dave, Ellen, Harold, and Fran) working on various projects. Needless to say I was surprised when I came home from work on the Thursday of Dave’s visit to find that he had already completed the duct project, and a few other projects as well. But, it can always go the other way too. Clare and Dave spent about 6 hours on Saturday trying to install an outside light that we could switch on and off from inside, which at first seemed like it was going to be easy, but unfortunately did not get accomplished. They still haven’t figured out exactly what is going on with some of those wires. Dave was successful in installing a new motion detector light on the side of the garage which is working very nicely now, and a new light above the stove. Both are highly appreciated.

woodpile in October – after much more cleaning up

While Dave and Clare were working on the outside light project, I decided to work some more on the wood pile project. I had been cutting up a fallen oak back in the woods over the summer, but I had not carried the pieces down yet. The more I thought about doing this, the harder it seemed. My original plan was to carry the wheelbarrow over the creek, carry the wood down to one side of the creek in the wheelbarrow, pile it up, then eventually carry the wood over the creek, and put it back into the wheelbarrow. As I thought about this more, I decided I should just go ahead and build a bridge, which I did awhile ago. Now that the bridge was built, getting the wood from the forest was much easier (though still quite a bit of work). Dave took down a couple loads on Friday and split some. He then suggested throwing out some of the old rotten wood, to avoid attracting termites. That project also took longer than expected. I worked on it for most of the day Saturday. Now it is looking much better. So my plan now is to continue cutting wood in the forest and bring it down to the wood rack, stacking it in the left third, then put it into the right third as I split it, which according to Dave gets easier when the temperature falls below freezing.