Rain! We finally had rain! After such a very long spell of hot dry weather it has been a real blessing to wake up to the drip, drip, drip of rain falling from the roof. Along with this much needed moisture also come cooler temperatures. It is so nice in the mornings to have to put a flannel-lined shirt over your sweatshirt as you head out to milk the cow. A far cry from only a week ago when it was a short sleeved t-shirt one was wearing for that morning chore!
Yesterday morning as I sat waiting for tea to brew, I was huddled in my armchair with a blanket around my shoulders when it suddenly occurred to me with the advent of this rain I could light up our wood cook-stove! I immediately jumped up and since the cooker was already stuffed with old paper, put a match to it, added a bit of always ready kindling and away she went. There is nothing, I repeat nothing like the warmth put out by a wood cooker on a chilly morning! The kettle was soon singing merrily on the hob, the juniper wood in the fire box snapping and popping away. Yikes! Autumn feelings are upon us!
Although we know summer will still have a goodly share of hot days for us there is that definite feeling in the air of an Autumnal presence. Already we 
have noticed the arrival of some Red-wing blackbirds, they seem to arrive each year to Darrell’s corn patch just when those kernels are ripe, sweet and juicy! They post one of two guards atop the fence posts while the others are busy stripping back the corn cob tops and feasting on the yellow morsels thus revealed. As you approach the garden a veritable black cloud emerges with wings whirring and swoops away for a short while until you leave and then the all clear is given by the sentry birds and the cloud descends once more to feast away. This year, because we already have our annual corn harvest safely canned in the pantry, I am not too begrudging of the birds having their share. This is definitely a harbinger of winter coming.
Along with the arrival of the birds, the briskness in the air has one thinking of autumn and the warmth of evening fires, cups of cocoa, bread baked in the wood cook-stove oven and savory hot-pots. I am certainly an autumn person! But before this bucolic scene can fully be played out, there is that slight matter of wood. Yes wood. For those of you who have wood stoves, the old fashioned kind, not the pellet ones, there is always the chore of getting in one’s winter wood supply. It is hard and often grubby work but my goodness the satisfaction it brings to see a wood shed filled to the brim with nicely chunked and split juniper and pine is worth the effort!
Darrell already started gathering his pile of logs, which he places in the turn-around at the end of our driveway, a handy place in which to cut the logs and split the wood before hauling it to the woodshed for stacking. With things being so dry this year it is much more sensible to haul the tree logs to a safe and handy spot in which to use the chainsaw for cutting them up into suitable lengths for the fire box. There are plenty of good firewood trees on our place, Darrell is still harvesting juniper that was lost years ago when the forest fire swept through and killed them, juniper is such a hardy wood that as long as the limbs hold the main trunk off the ground, the wood seasons and becomes most excellent burning stove wood.
After Darrell has been busy with the chainsaw, cutting lengths of logs that will fit in both wood cooker and our main wood heating stove, the log splitter is fired up. I must say, a log splitter sure makes short work of whacking rounds into nice manageable quarter chunks! These are then transported to our wood shed via the four-wheeler and trailer where I normally have the job of stacking the pieces in place as I try to cram as much as I can in there. On one side of the shed are pieces suitable for the wood cooker and then larger pieces are stacked in a separate section for the main heating stove. Juniper is my preferred firewood for the cookstove as it is very “hot” burning which gives a great “Yorkshire pudding” oven when finishing up Sunday dinner. What is a Yorkshire pudding oven you may ask? Well it is a good hot oven as those delectable morsels need such heat. On a regular stove one might set the temperature at a toasty 450-500 degrees but on our old wood cooker the oven gauge reads 7. Or as my old English cookbook just tells you: “A hot oven”.
There really is something to be said for cooler days and the approach of autumn, winter will be just around the corner and the crackling of logs in the wood stoves will be accompanied by that delicious warmth that hits you when you come in from the cold outdoors. Yes indeed, I am an autumn person for sure…