WOOD RICH

Life in the End of the Rainbow Valley is never dull and certainly different than the first half of my life. Perhaps this is why some of my friends told me that I needed to blog. The last time I blogged was about another country, El Salvador, so welcome to my foreign 'country' life, that's not so foreign anymore...

My first topic is WOOD. The End of the Rainbow Valley is really at the end of a mile long dirt road in the back of a valley with a barn, chicken coop, two houses, the old and new house, surrounded by woods - lots and lots of trees on 44 acres. Some of you may not know that we heat with wood. That's right. Don't worry we have back up systems : a furnace, in floor heat in addition to a wood stove and our main source heat, an Ukranian stove.

The Ukranian stove is not a typical fireplace with a flue going straight up but a flue that zig zags back and forth, warming the stones which also throw out heat. One request Irv had with the new house was that we would still heat with wood. 'Natureman' wanted to continue living light on the earth, not consuming more electricity/gas than necessary. I concurred as long as he was the one chopping! Stacking, hauling and starting a fire are all skills that I have perfected although Irv does the majority of all the above. After 30 some years chopping all the wood does get old and last year we opted for slab wood to be delivered in addition to wood gathered from downed trees and recent storms. I was not, I repeat 'not' ready for the new pile to arrive before summer has even started. BUT a humongous pile greeted me when I returned home one day last week. I was not a happy camper as I just wanted to look out the window and not see wood which I equate with winter. But a man's worth in the country is his 'pile of wood' and let me tell you we are WOOD RICH. When I left the valley on Friday there was a mountain of wood needing to be stacked. When Irv told me he was planning on stacking wood while I was gone, I laughed and said jokingly "so, it will be done upon my return, right?" I never in my wildest dreams believed that 5 cords would be stacked by my return. After spending the weekend in Milwaukee I returned to this sight -

WHAT A MAN! Am I a lucky girl or what? I am certainly RICH in many ways.