Biggest Puzzle Ever!

I've always loved doing puzzles.The whole family enjoys them actually. The bigger the better. Challenging? Bring it on!  3-D? Best give that kind to our eldest son!!
In Penetang we enjoyed a unique library. They had puzzles. One long winter we signed-out two or three at a time.

Then we moved to a farm where we plan to heat and cook with wood.

Thus began the "fun" of working on the biggest (and heaviest) puzzle we have ever done!

I can't exactly say I am having fun. But I am finding it enjoyable. Well, the first hour is enjoyable. It changes to something different after the body starts to wonder about your sanity...."You thought we could handle all this physical labour did you?!" haha.  After a bit you start encouraging your inner self to do just one more wheel-barrel load. And so one load, one chunk at a time the shed slowly fills.  

This is the pile of green wood that came first. All six cords came off our friend's property. He later came to chunk and split it. It would be up to us to stack it. 

In case you are wondering....A cord is stacked wood measuring four feet wide by four feet high and is eight feet long. Total volume of 128 cubic feet. 

A friend from Ontario sent us a link about stacking wood in circles.....we haven't any good, bad or otherwise wood-stacking habits to break, so we thought we would give it a go!

THE HOLZHAUSEN, A EUROPEAN METHOD FOR STACKING WOOD

How pretty is that!?

It’s a self standing structure which does not need to be braced or stacked in a wood shed.  The technique is simple, and built in a circle format allowing for the wood to support itself.  Stacking wood in the traditional fashion ~flat stacked upon each other~ does not give it enough room for airflow to pass through, therefore not allowing the wood to dry quickly. The holzhausen method has plenty of airflow, and it is said that wood can dry up to 2 times faster.  

(borrowed both the idea and the above paragraph from ....... afarmgirlinthemaking)

Here is a different six cords! Dry wood dumped at the front, wet at the back.

 Yep, like we don't have enough to do getting the house livable. We are also needing to stack two years worth of wood. 12 cords. Twelve!!!   

I keep wondering if it's because we are so new at it or if we are being too particular about where to put each piece..."Hummmm....where should I put this piece?" ..but it seems like such a slow go. The Man-Son and I spent about five hours at it today and it looks like we might have moved a third of the pile?. 

Looks so nice all stacked up though.

Geoff our "skilled worker" is doing things like replacing windows etc. while the manual labour of wood stacking is being left to the less skilled workers. ;) But being he is the only one in the family with any kind of experience (grew up with wood heat) he does check in once in awhile to see how we are coming along. Today we lined two walls of the wood shed and Geoff's comment was.......

"Good! you got two tiers up!" 

"Tiers?"  

"That's what we called stacked rows" he said.

"I was thinking "tiers" with a different spelling" I responded.

"Like blood, sweat and tears?" he asked.

Yep.

Maybe the "romance" of heating with wood will kick in when we can gather around the heat of the stove watching the flames flicker. But right now, highly aware of muscles that I wasn't noticing yesterday, all I can think about is how it would of been done 170 years ago before chain saws, gasoline, log trucks and wood splitters. 

And when you think of that....

trees cut down by axe, dragged out by horse, chunked by hand sawing, split by axe.....

well, you gain a whole new level of respect for our ancestors.

Truly, it's some kind of miracle that we are all here. Sheer determination and plenty of 

real blood, buckets of sweat and bottles of tears.

And that's the truth.

Well, hopefully by the time our wood stove arrives sometime in the next two weeks all that wood will be tucked away nice and dry in the wood shed. (which incidentally used to be a house that sat across the road, was dragged over here to be become a work-shop/wood-shed and looks every bit as old as our house) Then I can get busy gaining a new respect for our great-great-grandmothers who kept all our kin folk alive by cookin' on wood stoves!! :) 

Phew. How do you spell MAJOR learning curve ahead!?!