August is wood month. It is the month that I focus on getting all of our firewood in for the winter. We heat our house exclusively with wood, and it takes about eight cords to keep it toasty and warm for the winter. Last week, I built a new wood shed that is closer to our house than our old one. Today, I did some repair work on our hydraulic splitter to make it usable. I also repaired the little trailer our riding lawnmower pulls to haul the split wood to our woodshed. I also bought a new wheelbarrow with two tires in the front because I am getting so wimpy I kept tipping over the old one with only one tire in the front. So, I think I am ready to get as many grandkids as possible to come over for a bunch of splitting and hauling firewood. We have a big pile of oak “rounds” that guys in our church cut and hauled to our house for us, so now we are ready for a couple of big wood days and will be ready for winter.

When I was a kid growing up on the farm, there were many different chores we needed to do seasonally, like putting in the hay and harvesting food from our garden, but my favorite of all the things we did on the farm was getting firewood. It was pretty much the same routine when I was a kid as it is now, except we didn’t have a hydraulic wood splitter. I enjoyed the firewood gathering as a kid, and I also get a lot of satisfaction from it now, even though it was and is a lot of hard work. I was thinking about it today as I contemplated installing a “ductless heating system” to save all this work, wondering why I enjoy it so much that I keep doing it. I also enjoyed stacking up 150 pounds of frozen salmon fillets in the freezer that I caught in Alaska. I also have a blast on the day that we have a bunch of grandkids over, pick our apples, and make about 20 gallons of cider. Oh well, even though I don’t know why I get so much satisfaction from these activities, I think I will keep doing them, for now, anyway.