Woke up this morning to some ominious looking clouds over the mountain horizon, snow inbound. The wind was such last night that it (once again) wreaked havoc with my tarps covering the wood pile, among other things. I’ve learned quite a bit since moving to the mountains about managing wood for the stove, it turned out to be a little more complex than I thought.
- 2 cord would be plenty for the cooler weather I thought, I was wrong.
- Stacking the wood nice and neat satisfied by OCD, but not that practical. If you don’t pull from the pile evenly it starts to get a nice lean to it, resulting in frustration.
- Original tarps with bungee cords was great, but as the pile shrank constant adjustments and moving of anchor points was also a pain.
- New approach was to build a big box to hold 1 cord (this will make a total of 3), just cover that box with a tarp and toss the wood in there any old way. We’ll see how that goes.
With the wind last night and weather moving in I knew I had to adjust my tarps and also cover the new wood box. Some old sandbags came in handy to keep things secure along with some well placed deck screws and bungee cords, this between constant requests to throw a log down the hill from my dog.
With respect to water I’m refilling (via well) the large basin / stone pool that is near the house, I’d say it easily holds more than a medium hottub but every few weeks need to add more water as it gets lost to evaporation and animals drinking out of it. I have a pump that keeps it constantly moving so that’s a good thing. The reality is I have a well and plenty of storage on site but it’s always nice to have this as a backup to the backup plan because…you never know.
I inspected my tires on my truck and am due for a new set of 2, I’ve staggered purchasing and rotate on a consistent basis but these are not going to get me through the winter. Something like having good tires on a vehicle is essential to preparedness, can’t tell you how many folks I see on the side of the road when the big snow comes because they neglected to shod their vehicle with the appropriate tires.
That’s pretty much it for now, maybe I’ll include a daily prep segment once a week or so as it’s always good to get folks thinking and keep focused.
1 comments
Your idea of a wood box is a good one. My great granddad still had a wood burning cook stove when I was a kid and he had a “wood barn” as he called it. It was basically a small outbuilding that he had built to keep wood in. He had the door facing east as that was the direction least likely to have weather coming from, according to him, and covered the front with a canvas tarp. He had the floor covered with wooden pallets to keep the wood off the ground and it seemed to work pretty well for him.