{"id":21378,"date":"2022-02-10T10:59:41","date_gmt":"2022-02-10T17:59:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rodbinder.com\/journal\/?p=21378"},"modified":"2022-02-13T13:02:04","modified_gmt":"2022-02-13T20:02:04","slug":"feb-10-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rodbinder.com\/journal\/2022\/02\/10\/feb-10-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Feb 10 Hooped"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow<\/strong><\/p>\n

Another grey morning. The headaches are back. I surveyed the outside, a lot of snow had melted again.<\/p>\n

There seemed to be a lot of wood pieces exposed at first glance. I will try to go out later to have a look.<\/p>\n

I went outside and carefully made my way through the puddles from melted ice wearing sandals, to see if there was wood out there to be had.<\/p>\n

The answer wasn’t much.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I decided it wasn’t worth the hours of work in knee-deep wet snow to dig up more wet wood.<\/p>\n

I chopped more inside, and this time the wood did spit at me. It was that wet. I chopped till I got a hoop full.<\/p>\n

I turned the hoop toward the fire to help in the drying. I wouldn’t relight it until late tonight. It would be minus 10 later.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I noticed the debris pile was getting deep, but it was wet. I would need a hot fire to burn that.<\/p>\n

Chopping inside was one of the best decisions I made this year. No waste.<\/p>\n

Scattered around the big chopping block outside, under tons of snow, were hundreds of pounds of scraps of dry wood wasted. It was impossible to retrieve. Later I might have to try.<\/p>\n

I chose a few large pieces of bark and laid those on still-warm coals, then covered that in cat litter provided by the girl cats.<\/p>\n

I had hoped that would bake during the course of the day, making lighting the fire easier later on. An hour later, I noticed big smoke as I opened the stove door. It might even light itself.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

End of daylight. The fire re-lit itself, sort of. I opened the door, filled my house full of smoke and coughed, a lot.<\/p>\n

I threw a few wet logs in there for fun, one at a time and very quickly. Still looks like dense fog in the house. Later, just before bed, I will throw the few dry pieces of wood I have left and hope it will keep the house warm overnight.<\/p>\n