About the Family
As far as I can remember, I have been splitting and stacking firewood. My father heated our house with wood when I was a kid. We live in New England and he had electric heat. When the energy crisis hit in the seventies, electricity shot up and the cost made it very expensive to heat our house.
As a young kid I can remember going to the woods with my dad, uncle and cousin to cut down trees for firewood. Nothing could be better for two 10 year old boys than to be hanging out in the woods helping out our fathers. I have some great memories tugging on ropes to help pull down big oak trees as dad was cutting them down. We helped haul branches, carry logs, lugs chainsaws from the trucks and had a great time horsing around in the woods pretending to be Men.
As I got a little older, I would help dad split wood on nice cool days in the fall. I would work the lever and he would put the wood on the splitter. We would get really efficient at it and would see how much we could split. We would make some pretty big piles in an afternoon. As I grew up, I split and stacked a lot of wood. It was sort of a tradition for us that has continued on over the years. There was something special about working out in the cold and coming in to start the wood stove to heat the house using the wood you worked so hard to prepare. There is nothing like a nice wood fire on a cold winter day. The split wood smell of oak, maple, birch and their unique smoke smells bring back memories every new season.
Time went on and I have a family of my own now. It’s a three generation effort these days. Dad still heats with wood and I’ve carried on that tradition to our family. On a fall day, you might find my son on the log splitter controls, me loading and dad directing his grandkids on how it’s all done. It is nice to watch my kids learn about hard work, have a reason to spend time outside and enjoy a little family time together in this hectic life we all lead.
If you want to learn about how Cordwood Covers was born, check out this blog post.