Woodshed

Sinclair Lewis has the truth of it and that is why the very first project I undertook after buying this place was to organize a proper woodshed. After a roof that doesn’t leak and stout straight walls, the thing that will alleviate stress the most is a woodshed full of firewood ready to see you through the winter.

Like most good and proper woodsheds, mine is three sided and divided internally into two sections. Each section holds approximately 3 cords of wood.Legally speaking, at least in the United States, a cord of wood is a volume of 128 cubic feet, or 3.62 cubic meters. Use the formula height x width x depth ÷ 128 = cords Depending on the weather each side should see us through an entire winter in fine style without ever having to consider the amount of wood we are burning.

I look at my woodshed, full to the rafters in September, and I just think “Yeah! Bring it on, we’re ready”. There’s quite a bit of satisfaction in seeing your own labor turned into physical security like that, and there’s not so many opportunities to see it all so easily and obviously laid out like that.

Another thing a full woodshed tells me is that life is okay out here on the margins - and we definitely do live on (or in) the margins. Energy prices in Spain are wildly out of control and would be out of our meagre reach if we had to heat our place with electricity or oil or gas. Looking over a full woodshed to the forested mountain behind it where the wood came from, and where plenty more can come from with nothing other than effort, insulates us, protects us, just a little bit from the rapacious grasp of the financialization of everything.