Winter Storm Watch

Well, we're battening down the hatches here, as the saying goes, in preparation for what is supposed to be the first significant snow storm of the season. Lately, it's been fairly mild and occasionally rainy, but nothing too terrible as far as extremes. Late this morning, the wind began picking up with a chilly bite and the storm front started moving in. You could see it in the way the clouds came over the western mountain - sort of a long, thick band stretching out as far as the eye could see on either side...We had just run out of firewood, so I started up our hydraulic log splitter (one of the best investments we have ever made!) and began splitting madrone logs. The one silver lining in having to cut down all of those hazardous trees on our property over the years is that we have a pretty significant store of firewood, especially pine and madrone. The downside is that most of it is in the wood lot and needs to be cut down into moveable chunks and hauled up and over to the house. Thankfully, we already have a winter's worth of madrone logs (in assorted sizes - from colossal to tiny branches) behind the house, so I didn't have to walk too far. That being said, hauling large logs out of the firewood pile and over to the log splitter, then splitting and stacking, is still a great deal of physical labor for one little person! However, it's a million times easier than doing it by hand with an ax, which is how I USED to get our firewood every winter.

So now there is at least a 4-day supply of wood stacked next to the back door, the fire is crackling merrily in the hearth, the kittens are sleeping on the hearthstone, and I have a glass of wine waiting for me after evening farm chores.

Let it snow!