The woodman cometh

The woodfire has been my constant companion over the past few days. The other morning it was really cold particularly as I hadn't had a fire the night before having driven back from "the city" late t night and not having lit the fire but jumped straight in to bed.
Michele had stocked the wood heap on the day I arrived from NYC but with the cold we needed more wood.
The woodman was rung-th and he eventually came-th at the end of the day. The process in the past was the wood was dumped on one side of the fence and then we had to fling in over the fence in front of the wood "shed" and then stack it. Fortunately this woodman (Mark) backed his trailer to the fence and did the over the fence fling for us.

While I was waiting to pay him we chatted about the work of a wood contractor. I know I should have thought more about where the wood we were burning away in our lovely fireplace came from however Mark's comment about his work really brought it home.
I'd had asked about the previous wood supplier and Mark was talking about getting the wood from up the river which involved a whole days travel collection and return. The river he was talking about had to be the Murray so the wood must be Murray River redgums! Hopefully not

from old growth forests. Perhaps I should be researching other forms of heating but then electricity isn't necessarily the most efficient way to heat out lovely house so for now it's stack the wood heap and think about it all.
Stacking the wood heap doesn't take very long but it does give the back a bit of a work out and the fashionable green gardening gloves help prevent splinters.


Getting the fire going in the morning has been problematic these past couple of days. I have finally gotten over the need to build a fire a girl guide would be proud of- that is the careful gathering and crushing up of "punk", the fine twigs and then tiered on top the little sticks , then the larger sticks; careful striking of the match and lighting the punk and feeding on other sticks until the blaze really catches before putting on a small log building up to larger logs and then enjoying the fires blaze. Instead I now ball up a whole lot of old newspaper shove in some leaf litter and twigs from the bin near the wood-heap and as soon as possible shove a log of wood on. Lighting the fire can involve only one match but perhaps more if needed- girl guide training out the window!

Needless to say sometimes the fire hasn't been as effective as I would like and I curse my stupidity in ignoring all that good girl guide training so perhaps next time I call on my guiding training as a taking time with the laying of the fire will save time in the end.
The sunshine in the morning can be quite deceptive and we got lots of rain during the day so having the fire going seemed to ward off some of the gloom.