Two Things in Hand

If the sun ever shows again, this is where our hot water will come from

It rained pretty much all day yesterday, never hard but enough that by the time evening chores rolled around I was good and soaked through, my clothing stuck to me like dressing to a wound. It was chilly, too – if it got above 45, I sure never noticed – but I was splitting and stacking firewood and if you get cold when you’re splitting and stacking firewood… well, not to pass judgment or anything, but you ain’t doing it right.

With yesterday’s push, we’re well over the 5-cord mark, with perhaps another cord bucked and ready for the maul. Close. Real close. But firewood isn’t horseshoes or hand grenades, and close doesn’t really cut it. I mean, all things being equal, I’d prefer to run out of wood in March than in February but either way means trouble. One just means a month less of trouble than the other. I guess that’s worth something, but it’s still trouble.

You know what’s cruel about the way we live? I’ll tell you what: You’ve always got to be thinking ahead. Always. This is not a just-in-time-delivery life. There’s the firewood, which needs a good five or six months of drying time before it’s fit for the stove. There’s the garden, the planning for which begins approximately the moment we finish harvesting the previous season’s crops. There’s the new barn we keep threatening to build, which means months if not seasons if not years of prep, what with all the sawlogs that must be pulled and milled into lumber. There are the trees Penny planted in the rain while I split and stacked. Some of those trees won’t produce for a decade or more. There are pigs I can see through my office window as I type: Seven months of twice-daily feeding, a total of 400-some odd buckets of milk and grain before they’re ready for the knife. That’s some well-planned bacon.

Most folks don’t want to live this way, and I guess I understand why. There are days I’d rather not have to think about cutting wood for a fire that won’t burn for another half-year. There are mornings – when it’s cold and I spill soured milk down my leg and the pigs won’t stop nibbling on my pants as I walk through their pen on the way to the trough – when I wonder what it’d be like to just go to the store and buy some damn pork chops. And what about all those trees, those feeble little whips that are going to grow into something that will outlast me by a century or two? Oh, sure, it’s nice to think that my grandchildren will gather their fruit, maybe hang a swing from a limb. But what if Fin and Rye move away? What if they don’t have kids? What if someone cuts that tree for firewood?

This is what I’m learning: You need to hold two things in hand to live this way. You need to hold your faith in the future. This is no life for a pessimist. But you also need to hold tight to your affection for the work itself, because if all you’re thinking about is the reward, you’re well and truly screwed. You can’t spend six hours splitting and stacking wood in the rain because you know that eight months from now, there will be a fire to warm yourself beside. Or at least, I can’t. I can only spend six hours splitting and stacking wood in the rain because I like the way it feels to split and stack wood for six hours in the rain. I like what the work does for my mind and body. I like that I can merely glance at a piece of wood and know how it will split, whether it will cleave neatly in half with a lazy man’s one-armed swing or need to be coaxed apart with multiple blows that come from some gut-wrenched place.

Next March, when we’re all gathered by the fire, warmed by the very pieces of firewood I split yesterday, will I be glad? Damn straight. Of course. But the beauty thing is, it won’t be the first time that wood made me feel that way. You know what’s even better? When I came inside yesterday evening, chilled by the tractor ride from the woods, the first thing I did was stand next to the wood stove, where a handful of sticks from last year’s firewood burned. I’d cut and split that wood, too. It felt real good.