Since Mark now has our wood stove up and running, I figured it was high time to gather some kindling.  The windy days last week knocked down a lot of dead, dry branches out of trees in the floodplain, and it only took a few minutes to pick up a heavy hauler load.

Last winter when the chainsaw wasn't working, we discovered that the miter saw makes short work of small and medium-sized branches.  First, I broke all of the small branches over my knee, then I sawed through the larger branches.

I was a bit shocked at how small one heavy hauler load of kindling becomes once sawn to size --- the resulting pile was only about knee high.  That should be enough to start a week's worth of fires, though.  Warmth sure does make me happy!

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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