Rule of the day: always know your limits.
The history behind the whole wood cutting and stacking bits in Little Dee was my own childhood. Growing up, we heated our entire two story New England house with firewood (and i tell you, the mornings were miigghhhty chilly).
So, there was lots of cutting, collecting, wheelbarrowing, and stacking. Good memories, believe it or not.
But I love the fact that Dee is merrily running off into the forest, axe in hand :-)
I believe it, Christopher. My bedroom was so cold in the winter that when I left a glass of water on the stand by the window, it had a skiff of ice on it in the morning. Ever since, I love a cool-to-cold room for sleeping, with lots of quilts. I also still love ice water first thing in the morning, but now I have to get it from the fridge. Since I was an early riser, I got up and restoked the fire in my pajamas from about 13 years old, on. The rest of the family got up when they felt the warmth those last 5 years before I went into the service at 18. I loved the sawing, the chopping, the splitting and using the small tractor to haul the wood back to the home for stacking. I didn’t care for the stacking much. And I especially loved the smell of hardwoods burning.
I hear everyone on this one, I lived on Farm for a year and the old housethat was heated by a wood stove, Most of the fall was spent splitting wood , and in the winter cracking the ice on the toilet.
Oh yeah, I remember those cold toilets! Glad I’m a guy, I only had to sit on it once a day on average. Pitied the femmes of the household in the dead of winter.