Wood Stove Season

It snowed!  It was just a dusting, and didn't stick around long, but I think it finally settled in my mind  that the summer is over. 

Brandon spent hours last weekend chopping firewood from a fallen tree.  The tree fell from our wood line into the neighbors hay field.  It lay there for several weeks before someone used their tractor to push it from the field into the trees.  Brandon fought through the brush to claim it for firewood.  He thinks we already have enough wood stored from his efforts last fall to squeak through the winter, but he gets antsy without a surplus.  This new wood isn't seasoned, so it will be best if we don't burn it this winter unless we need to.  

That old saying about firewood warming you twice is true, he was overly warm from his efforts to saw and chop the tree, and and we haven't even burned it yet.  He was sore from all that chopping too, but the strength that comes from all the effort is just a bonus.  

Just look at the moat around the mobile chicken coop.  If I miss my dry path to the door, I slosh through the mud that softened up by the moles who excavate here.  Brandon curses and threatens the moles when he stumbles in their excavations, but I find moles so interesting I don't mind sharing our soil with them.  I like to envision a whole different world inhabited by strange predatory creatures under our feet.  

After the snow melted and the puddles dried up, I blocked the big chickens from using the mobile coop, and set it up as a shelter for my baby birds that have been living in the greenhouse brooder.  I stapled tarps over the open sides, filled the bottom with a thick layer of dry hay, stretched extension cords all they way from from the outlet in the barn, and hung a heat lamp, feeder, and water bucket.  I was so proud of my work I was convinced Brandon would mention the tidy job I did with the tarps.  As we took our evening walk he looked at it and said "You managed to make that ugly coop even uglier." What!?! 

Well, the chicks appreciate my efforts anyway.  The big Red Ranger chicks weren't too hard to catch to transfer to the mobile coop, but those little white leghorns are like canaries.  They fly!  And they run really fast.  They scrambled so hard to escape me that they kicked up dust in the brooder and I had tie a bandanna around my face to keep from choking on the chicken dust.  At night the little white birds are centered under the heat lamp with a ring of big red birds on the outside of the cluster.  I think they like their new digs, and are learning to jump onto the perches.  

At night the coop glows red from the heat lamp.  When I approach to look in the window all the chicks scatter and squawk like I'm the big bad wolf.  It makes me miss Helen and Mrs. Hall, my first chicks who were raised in a box in the house, and were so tame I could pick them up and feed them by hand.  

I hope the chicks enjoy the heat from their lamp as much as the house cats and I enjoy the heat from our wood stove.  I love wood stove season so much I can welcome the winter.  Do you love your wood stove too?