Preparing for the freeze

      The nights are drawing in and in the mornings you can see the sun steadily marching south as it rises later and later, at the end of October the clocks will go back one hour and the dark nights of winter will be upon us.
      This turning point is the time when the wood burning stove is lit in an almost celebratory manner, a bit like a pagan festival I suppose. To support this event we needed logs and the first stage of the preparations are under way and the split wood is stacked and ready to go. The fence is divided into two metre panels so we already have a fair old stock but you can never have enough seasoned wood.
      An extra boost to the stocks will be added when I get round to splitting a huge farm  trailer full of already sawn logs and getting them all neatly stacked. There's a real satisfaction to seeing the log stack grow and know that even if you have a bad winter and power cuts you'll be warm and able to cook on the wood burner.
      Cutting, splitting and stacking is hard work but a really simple and satisfying pleasure.