Today, we planned on finally unloading the pallet of firewood from the utility trailer into the wood box.

( Preparation for Stocking the Wood Box )

The temperatures have dropped low enough and stayed that way the the electric heater cannot stave off the cold any longer. Yesterday, I gave in and got the fireplace lit for the first time this season.

( Burn, baby, burn )

We held off moving the small wood box off the porch on account of how cold it was at the start of the month, but moved it yesterday. As this weekend is the "ceremonial" start of summer (which runs more or less from Memorial Day to Labor Day), we could now use the whole front porch for relaxing and bird watching.

( Chairs and Birds )

Yesterday, Lisa hooked up the utility trailer and we collected the pallet of firewood for which I paid last weekend during the break between snowstorms. The days are long enough now that when we got home, we were able to unload the pallet before dark. The woodbox is now almost completely full, which is a good thing.

Temperatures are now staying above freezing for longer. Yesterday evening we had some cold rain, but that just accelerated the snow melting from the roof of the house and garage. This made quite a racket for a while, but by today, the rooftop snow was gone.

( The Retreating Snow )

In some of the photos of the area near the woodbox, you may have noticed a pile of uncut cord-wood as well as a not-very tidy pile of pallets. We accumulate pallets, as the Pres-to-Logs and other wood is packaged on pallets. Lisa has tried to cut these down to short lengths so we can burn them in the fireplace; however, the pallets are generally ( Read more... )

It has been a lovely sunny day outside, and not especially cold (around +8°C), but there's been a lot of wind coming out of the west and thus carrying all of the chill off the snow-covered mountains. Plans that Lisa and I made to possibly start reducing pallets down to burnable size are on hold pending a slightly warmer day.

I knew the forecast was for some more snow, but I didn't expect even as much as we did have overnight.

( But It Doesn't Stick Around )

The weather forecast shows temperatures will stay above freezing with highs up to around +15°C for the next several days. I therefore will take a small risk and let the fire go out. This will be the first time we've let the fire die completely since I think early November, other than when we did the two-night trip to Sacramento. We'll see if we can ( Read more... )

I am promoting replies to well-intentioned people suggesting what to do about the firewood here. I contacted Lignetics, who make Press-to-Logs, and learned:

Most importantly: Lignetics' log-making machine is broken and they are having difficulty repairing it. Consequently, they have been unable to fill orders to their customers ( Read more... )