Woodpile Man
Chicks 03/02/2010
N lives with her parents up the road a mile, and about 3 years ago they had to have two huge maple trees in their front yard cut down because they were dying and would probably fall on the house in a storm. The trees were maybe two hundred years old. A man with a bucket lift came and cut the trees without doing any damage to the house, dropping all the big chunks of wood on the lawn. He said he would get rid of the wood for an additional $900.00, but they said that wouldn’t be necessary. I said I would be delighted to take the wood, and clean up the yard to boot, and in 90-plus-degree heat I went everyday and cut up the huge chunks until the two maples had been cut and split into pieces I could lift and bring to my house. N’s mom even let me use her pick-up truck to haul the wood. I had to make about 30 trips, and drink about 5 gallons of iced apple cider, but it was finally done. I didn’t have the woodshed that leans on the garage yet, so I piled the wood on the strip of land between the garage and the road and covered it with tarps. When the shed was done, 2 summers ago, I put all the wood inside it, and N’s maple was put in first. (See woodshed photos) By the time we got the Big Snow of 2010 (Feb 23 to Feb 27), a lot of the wood in the shed was gone, but there was still a bunch of N’s maple left. Most of it was still in big chunks that I knew I would rather split in the winter than in the heat of August when I brought the wood to my house. Thousands of homes lost power in the storm, but we were lucky. Our house and a few around us never lost electricity for more than about half an hour. N and her parents had power for the first few days of the storm, but then they went dark too. When I called to see how they were doing, N said they were okay except they had two “week old chicks” that her sister had brought over to her house because her sister had lost power almost as soon as the storm began. The chicks had to be kept warm, about 90 degrees F, with a heat lamp, or they would die. Now here’s the point: I told N that I could come and get the chicks, because I still had power, and even if my power went out, I could keep the chicks warm because I had the wood stove going. And yes, I was burning the maple from her yard. N’s power came on a day later and I brought the chicks back to her, but not before I took a few pictures of them, and Fran and I got to hold them.     Comments03/21/2010 09:43
Yes, I too had a couple chicks I had to keep hot this winter. Leave a Reply | AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesAugust 2011 Categories |
RSS Feed