Beloved Love and Snow Drift Love

We have a couple of fun new things going on at Ironwood Hollow, but no photos ready today for those posts, so they'll wait. In the meantime, if you'll indulge me, I'll just talk a little bit about a  couple of the songs that can be found at Harper Meader Bandcamp.

Life in our winter is simply amazing.

The oldest song on the CD is "Beloved Love", and it's dear to my heart. Honey and I knew that we were meant for each other. We longed to be together, and our lives were just not quite ready to allow us that gift of waking up to see the dawn together. For me, our precious moments of time together were the finest moments my heart had ever known, and I was caught in that perfect storm of being exactly where I wanted to be, needed to be, and knowing that it was fleeting. Dreading the dawn, because I would once again awake alone, and at the same time thanking whatever Gods or spirits had brought us together for showing me the answer to my heart's quest.

For the musicians, I use a four-finger picking pattern in regular tuning, sort of Gordon Lightfoot-style, and the chords are:  Dsus2, Am, B7, Em, and G.

The next oldest is "Snow Drift Love." I wrote this last summer, on a very hot day, knowing that soon we would be living together, that we would spend our winters together, awake together in the morning to see that amazing blanket of snow that sometimes stops everything here at Ironwood Hollow. My favorite word in the song is "dooryard," a quintessentially downneast term. I once met an Italian New Yorker, name of Gaitano, who had moved to Maine, and remember asking how he liked it here. He was thrilled. "Oh, the language is endlessly fascinating. Just today I learned to pronounce a new Maine word." Then he crossed his eyes, and carefully said it: doouh yaahd! Then he clapped his hands with delight, and said that he found our country ways so charming. 

...underneath is still the front yard we know...

He has gotten tired of our country ways, and gone back to the city, but Honey and I, who truly love when we can see our breath in the bedroom on a frosty morning, still love our country ways, and this song is from when I looked forward to sharing that together with her. I hope you like the song, and queue it up on a blustery February morning...Honey and I will be tucked in with our tea, living the life we dreamed of, storm-stayed together and loving it!

Oh, for the musicians, I play this one with an alternating two-finger pattern, regular tuning, and the chords are: E and Asus2 alternating for the verses, and A, E, and one B7 snuck in there, for the chorus. Very easy, and one of my favorite chord patterns.

Mud Season Musings

I'm going to start with a confession. My mom, a dyed-in-the-wool Mainer, moved to Florida quite a few years ago, and stayed there for most of the year, only coming home for Christmas and a little bit of the summer. My confession is that, among all the kids and step-kids, I'm the only one who never went to visit. My sister went, and even found parts of Florida that she liked. My step-brothers and step-sisters all went, and more than once. I even sent my daughter down alone on a plane, and she had a nice time. For myself, though, I just knew I would hate Florida.

As an avid reader of mystery novels, you'd think I would love it there, the home of not only Clinton "Skink" Tyree and Marion "Doc" Ford, but also of the father of Florida Tough Guys, Travis McGee. Nope, even that's not enough. The reason that I knew I wouldn't like it is that having a frost is so crazy there that it makes national news. That, and the fact the you could throw a frisbee over its highest point from its lowest point with little effort. Sorry, but this Maine boy likes his seasons, and his hills.

Ironwood Hollow Awaits Spring

Eventually, and sadly long after Mom gave it up and moved back home, I went to Florida for a weekend, and was completely vindicated. It's terrible there, or at least it is for me. The weather was mild, in the fifties, and people kept apologizing for the cold, as though their state was in breach of contract. There are no hills, neither up nor down, and that flatness applies to the weather as well. I couldn't wait to get back home, and will never go there again. That doesn't mean, of course, that I'll stop reading Randy White and Carl Hiaasen! This morning, snuggled in bed with my Honey and watching a drizzle feed the thriving crop of mud that is taking over our dooryard, we were talking about this, and realized that we both have the same prejudice.

Here it is; real, honest-to-god seasons, so that you have to change your wardrobe, either start a fire or open a lot of windows, and adjust to new waves of wildlife that follow those seasons, build character and give a shape to our lives. Yes, of course I get tired of shoveling and snow-blowing, of getting up before dawn to go out and be turned into Frosty while wrestling the old Gravely snowblower up and down our quarter-mile driveway, only to come in and shake life into my frozen fingers in front of a smoky fire. Yes, of course I can't wait for mud season to be over, when I don't know from day to day whether I'll end up frame-deep at the crest of the driveway, needing three men and a come-along to get out. Yes, of course I am ready for fall long before the mosquitoes, blackflies, and deer-flies have gotten tired of bleeding me dry in the hot sun. Absolutely, each season has its time, sometimes more than enough of it, and I keep having to adjust as one gives way to the next.

We can't imagine life without real seasons!

The point of it all, though, is that the process of loving, hating, and adjusting to, each new season is an enormously important part of what makes life interesting. I waited all summer to be able to kick through piles of autumn leaves with my Honey during our first fall season together. Then in the fall we both dreamed of being snowed in together, of watching the trees out the window, sagging under pillows of snow while we stayed snug under covers. Now we're eagerly awaiting that first day that's warm enough to sit on the porch in the sun, maybe with sweaters on. If every week were more or less the same, it would be like living in a house with only one book to read, wouldn't it? The sameness would be stifling. Sledding the car out through the deepening mud this morning, I celebrated in my head, thanking the universe for seasons, for cycles, for the woman who watches just as keenly as I do for that first touch of gold in the willows, then in the forsythia, then for the first north-bound goose, and then...and then...

Happy Mud Season!

Writing and Reading on Paper

Yes, I have been remiss in my blogging. Sorry about that! My excuse is that I haven't had an interesting DIY or cooking project going for a little while, and have instead been busy with things like the water heater not working, the snow needing lots of snowblowing, and similar efforts. The real reason though, if I'm perfectly honest with you, is more complicated, and has to do with this medium, the internet. 

I was just reading a fellow bookseller's blog, and he very intriguingly related books to horses. I think his point was that, even though we have always loved horses and relied upon them, they have been needed far less in the mechanized era, but books have been more resilient in the digital age. That's how it struck me anyway. I enjoyed the post very much, and it got me thinking. I find that once I saw through the glittery show of how much the internet and social media can connect us, bring information to our fingertips, render encyclopedias obsolete, and so on, and realized how thin the experience of digital media is, I am more than ever in love with paper books.

Apple Valley Books in Winthrop Maine

It's not just the books, though. I am more in love with live acoustic music, song from vocal chords, friends to talk to in person, real food on a real plate, and most importantly, love with the woman who shares so many up-close breaths of real air with me. It goes on...chess with Soren at the kitchen table is vastly more rewarding than chess online with strangers. Frisbee or other real outdoor play will beat any online play you can conceive of. Pinterest may show us the most delicious pictures of bacon-wrapped goat-cheese monkey-bread with avocado glaze, or whatever, but the finest thing to cross my palate lately was cooked by my Honey in a real pot on a real stove, and was not shared or liked online. For those who want to know, it was sweet potato and brussels sprouts baked with herbs, bacon, and chevre, but it could have been ANYTHING and beaten out pinterest.

Back to the books though. What I've been doing with my time hasn't been something that shares well on a blog, at least not yet. I've been fine-tuning my song collection with the goal of recording, for one. I have about a half dozen songs that I think are as good as any of my favorite recorded songs, within my musical taste, and will find a way to get them out into the world. Also, I've been writing, a novel, on paper. It's moving along nicely, and I am happy with it. I'm writing in pen on lined notebooks, then revising it just a bit as I type it on the computer. I found my old typewriter, got a ribbon for it, and when I can type out on the porch so as not to deafen everyone in the house, I'll switch to that for my first draft. The relationship between our dreams and imagination, and the physical act of writing down words, is a magical thing that I believe will survive the digital age intact. In this age, it may well be an e-book at least as fast is it can be a paper book, but the book-lover in me hopes that paper copies will be kept and loved for years on good old-fashioned bookshelves by people who live most of their lives away from glowing computer screens.

I'll be back into the blogging, I promise. There are many projects waiting for spring, waiting for the workshop to be warm enough to do carpentry in, waiting for winter to loosen its hold on those of us who live under the snowdrifts until May up here in Maine. In the meantime, get off this computer thing, and go play, write, cook, read, be with your loved ones, eh?

Maine Firewood Values in BTU

Heat Values for Common Maine Firewood.

I grew up with a couple of woodstoves, and have gotten used to "just knowing" which wood is best for heating the house, and how much heat I'll get from a particular stove-load of firewood. I can tell how long I have before I should look at stoking the fire again, by what I've put into it, and how well it's burning. This becomes second nature after a while, honest. If you are new to wood heat, it may seem like just too many variables, too many maybes. Sometimes you go to bed with a stove full of wood and wake up to good coals, sometimes it's all gone by morning. Trust me, it will make sense after a while.

The heat generated by burning wood is measured in BTUs, or British Thermal Units. Briefly, a BTU is the amount of heat needed to raise a pound of water from 39 degrees to 40 degrees fahrenheit. Most of the world measures heat by joules, but the BTU hangs on in talk of furnaces and wood-stoves. Specifically, firewood is rated in milllions of BTUs per cord. To complicate things a little further, there's the factor of how much of the heat is expended vaporizing the water contained in the wood. Now to be frank, I ran into this in my research and thought, Huh. the heat doesn't leave the house other than up the chimney, whether it's vaporizing water in the wood or not. Why should it matter? I found lists showing the effective heating of wood after considering this factor, lists that showed the raw heat availability, and lists that showed both. Some of them seemed to conflict with my experience of the heating utility of the kinds of wood that I'm used to. The sources that most closely match my experience, using the wood I almost always burn, yield these results. In Maine, most of what your likely to burn is listed here, with the best heat-providers at the top.

To be clear, if you burn softwood, like dry pine or cedar, it will burn hot. But it will burn up and become ash very quickly, compared to the hardwoods. I include hemlock because it lasts a bit longer than that, and is a good wood to include in your firewood mix to use for morning fires, just getting the heat going quickly.


There are considerations, of course. Poplar starts to rot very quickly if it is not split right away, same as all kinds of birch. Hornbeam and oak, while great heat sources, are best added to a fire that is already hot and underway. It is much easier to start a fire with hemlock and maple. Smaller pieces burn up faster than bigger pieces. If you are new to wood heating, at least try to get the hang of this; when you are there to tend it, run a smaller fire, but hotter (more air, more flame). Tend it often, adding just a stick or two. This will be quick, hot fire that will be better for your chimney, and honestly more enjoyable to look at. When you go to bed, or when you leave for work, stuff your stove with larger pieces of wood from the top of this list, and give it less air. It will burn slowly, but long. The downside of those long burns is the creosote buildup in your chimney. You can combat this by running the fire hotter when you are at home.

 Another consideration is that while oak and ironwood are your greatest heaters, they also grow slowly, ironwood especially so. You can't use several cords of ironwood annually for very long before you run out of it, and have none left growing. A variety is good, and leaving the right blend of younger trees behind to mature is also good.

Ice Lanterns for Winter Beauty

Here in Maine we've been making ice lanterns whether we like it or not for as long as there have been buckets. I remember punching a hole in my horse's frozen water, and sliding the hollow ice shell out of the pail, back during the Carter administration. I think Dad was the first to put a candle inside the glittering shell of winter ice, at least in our little family enclave.

Ice lantern with bittersweet, cedar, and rose hips.

Since those days I have set many a frozen shell of water, formed inside a five-gallon honey-bucket, up on a snow-drift, lit a pillar candle inside it, and let it burn for nights on end. Why did I never think to freeze pretty greenery into it, though? Recently I saw an example of this, and it was such an obvious and lovely improvement that I just had to laugh at myself. And then go and try it!

Here's how I used to do it: fill a five-gallon plastic bucket with cold water, and leave it outside for a full night of single-digit weather. Bring it inside, pour warm water over the bucket, slide out the frozen shape. The bottom will be much thinner. Punch a hole in it, pour out the still-liquid center, place it outside upside-down. Light a candle in it, and voila! A basic ice lantern! In cold weather it will last for a long time, and be beautiful.

Now, some improvements to that basic lantern. I went out and cut some cedar sprigs, some bittersweet, and some rose-hips. You could use anything that is pretty, from pine-cones to dried flowers. Then I cut the top off of a 2-liter soda bottle, just below the sloped curve, so it made a large empty pillar. I found some rocks to fill it with. Using the same five-gallon bucket, I placed the rock-filled container in the bucket, filled the bucket around that with cold water, and some ice cubes to get it started, and arranged my pretty greenery around the soda bottle. 

The candle lights the frozen greenery from within, winter magic!

Leaving it outside overnight on a below-twenty-degrees night just barely did it. The ice was thin. You might need to take two nights like that, or wait until a single-digit night is forecast. I suggest placing the bucket on lawn furniture or wooden slats, anything to get it off the ground. Surprisingly, the ground will insulate the water from below. The next morning, all you need to do is free it from the bucket by running tapwater over the outside and sliding your lantern carefully out into the sink, letting the water in the middle escape down the drain. The following evening, place a tea-light, votive, or pillar candle inside, and you've got wintry gorgeousness! However you celebrate the coldest, darkest time of the year, an ice lantern sporting your local winter color can add a special magic...

Update from Ironwood Hollow

It has been a good week here at Ironwood Hollow. The Vanilla Tupelo Honey Mead started a week ago has been bubbling away quietly in the pantry. We've talked with a couple of mead-students who are now accomplished meaders in their own right about some batches in progress and how to handle unforeseen issues (when in doubt, wait for it to get better). We've moved some things around so as to get to the mead in the cellar a little more easily, with an eye to finding just the right bottles for what promises to be an epic Thanksgiving. 

We've had the first snow of any consequence since Honey and the kids have moved in, and we all watched a young buck browsing our blackberry bushes amidst the new white this morning before school. Everyone pitched in with the project of building a rack above our firewood in the woodshed, for all the reclaimed lumber that has been accumulating for future projects. 

The Mellow Hill Dome

The kids have taken to country life in a beautiful way, and we're just getting started. The boys have done nearly all the work of sifting gravel for the driveway repairs and a greywater drainage area for wash-water. All of them help with the firewood. This morning we watched that buck nibbling in the yard before the kids made their own tracks right across his on their way to the school-bus pickup.

We have started to arrange our thanksgiving, first one together. I realized this morning that I will just be a puddle of emotion for that entire day, as Honey's family meets mine, we fill the 'Hollow with more love and kin than ever before, and these cordwood walls (and our arms) embrace the newly grown family that we are bringing together. Tears of joy make the best seasoning, and since I know what a big old heap of sentimentality I am, I think I'll let Honey do the talking while I carve the turkeys. 

We just got our first delivery from Currier and Chives, a new local bakery CSA, and had home-made raisin bread toast for breakfast today! If there is a local farmer who sells any kind of shares in his product, that is such a great way to support the real local green economy. Ask at health-food stores and farmer's markets if there is anything like that around you; we have seafood, meat, vegetable, and bakery CSA's in our area, and support them as we can.

We're looking forward to a big building project next year, and have started pulling ideas together for that. Winter in Maine is long, and cozy evenings by the fire with graph paper and alternative building books will get us through. Watch for updates!

Filling Dad's woodshed.

About the kids and wood...my Dad, right next door in the Mellow Hill Dome, needed help this year with his firewood for the first time ever. He had it all cut ahead and seasoned in the old shed down by the barn, but needed to have three cords of wood moved up to the shed next to the house and workshop. In two easy afternoons the kids pitched in, and we scurried back and forth like an ant colony with wheelbarrows, until he had everything just the way he needs it for the winter. I was so proud of them...I haven't smiled that much through hard work in my whole life. 

So that's life at Ironwood Hollow this week. Family, wildlife, projects, hopes, dreams, blessings, trials, love, life, beauty, and yet more blessings. May your life be as full, and may you be as aware of that fullness as we are!

Winter in a Cordwood Masonry House

Winter is even more magical from inside cordwood masonry!

The debate about the R-value of cordwood masonry has gone on for some time, and as far as I know has not been settled yet. R-value is the rate at which heat travels through the walls, and different building materials have different R-values. That's the reason for part of the question; cordwood masonry has three different materials in a standard wall. First there is the mortar, which isn't usually plain mortar. We include sawdust, which is not used in mortar for any other purposes that I know of. Then there is the insulation layer between the outer and inner layers of mortar. Often that is a mix of sawdust and anydrous lime. Finally there is the cedar (or other softwood), which is laid up with the grain running through the wall, not parallel to the wall, the way it would be if we used boards or logs. I recently learned that the R-value calculated for wood is usually figured on the assumption that heat passes through the grain, not along the grain. This means that calculating the insulating qualities of cordwood masonry is even more of a mystery than previously thought.
I have been in my house for over ten years now, and would add yet another factor. As the walls age, and the wood seasons, you get little cracks in the wood, called checking. Also, the wood often shrinks a bit, which is most noticeable with the larger pieces. The resulting gaps have an effect on air flow. To be honest, they allow the free flow of air through the building, because there is no good way to fill in all of those tiny spaces, inside and out. In the summer, we appreciate the effect, and say the house "breathes well." In the winter, especially on cold, windy days, we run the wood-stove extra hot!
Still, I wouldn't have it any other way, and you only need to spend an evening watching the snow fall through the castle-like deep window, framed by native cedar, with the fire crackling, to learn to appreciate the coziness of life in a cordwood masonry house. Blankets, sweaters, good socks, and lots of snuggling are the magic formula for making it all good.
Back to the R-value, my contribution to the debate is that whatever the R-value is, you need to also consider actual air-flow as the building ages. I don't bring it up to be discouraging, though; that flow-through is refreshing and healthy, the opposite of modern houses that are so tight you need to pump in fresh air sometimes.