Winter wood & christmas

We have been dealing with winter wood for the past couple of weeks. Ensuring we will have enough to last all winter for both the wood furnace and the kitchen cook stove. Ken thinks he may have stumbled onto wood for $40 something a cord ,which is a fantastic price. He will find out today for sure. We have noticed that there are a lot more ads for wood. I am assuming the price of oil and gas is making wood is look like a good option again. It is a wonderfully warm heat. But not as clean. Our house is dusty and I need to clean more often to keep up with the dust. But I would not trade the warmth of wood for any other heat. When I first moved here to this house  I spent almost $6000 for oil . In one winter .While it was a bad winter, I was still commuting back to Guelph because I had my restaurant so I wasn't even here 3 days out of the week.  As soon as I could I had a new wood oil combo furnace installed. To date we have never used oil just wood . Probably could not afford to have the tank filled ,the prices are crazy .And the oil companies will not partially fill your tank. At least not around here . So we are happy with our wood heat and will continue on . Ken has some really large blocks which work well if we are going away for any length of time . We just build a good fire and bank the wood and throw a large block on top. pack other smaller pieces  around and the fire  lasts for sometimes 2 days. We have gathered lots of starter/kindling wood but will need more. By all accounts this is supposed to be a harsh winter. So we need /want to be well prepared. I have still not mastered the trick of starting the fire without paper. Luckily my seniors give me all of their old newspaper so I have a ready supply. One day I will hone my fire starting without paper skills. But not today.
Now onto Christmas.....
We have decided again to forgo the silliness that Christmas has become and just enjoy a lovely meal . We will have small gifts for the Grandchildren , but mostly practical things. For example Zoe will have a new bird feeder and some seed to put outside of her bedroom window. She loves creating so I will get her some art supplies too. Aidan and Jude are the same and love art supplies. I will send some money for Thor because he is in California. And sometime around Christmas Freya will arrive . A gift for all of us.
We think of Victorian Christmas which would include the year we are portraying 1865, with visions of flaming plum puddings,stockings,Christmas trees and beautifully dressed tables. Everywhere you look in ads for the Christmas season this lovley Victorian vision of the holidays is portrayed. But what was the reality of Christmas not so long ago...all over Victoria's world.
 Dickens "A Christmas Carol" is more to the reality of the Victorian Christmas. Especially  Victorian England in the cities which were over crowded and filled with underpaid and over worked mostly factory workers .Who crowded into the cities from the country sides looking for work. People were taken advantage of because of the over abundance of ready cheap labour. The industrial revolution had started and there was extreme wealth and dire poverty.
But I want to think about Christmas here , Upper Canada 1865. When I think about what Christmas and the on coming winter meant I think that the thought/focus of the season must have been survival. Just with our own little project here, despite our ability to travel into town if we need anything our thoughts are still on how to keep us and our animals warm, fed ,watered and to prepare for things such as maple syrup production in the early spring. It must have been a heavy burden to prepare for winter, to know your family and all of your livestock depended on you preparing properly and forgetting nothing in order to survive the winter months. You had no idea how long or how harsh that winter would be . I would also imagine that if you got together with family or neighbors it was your last visit often until the spring. Depending on the severity of the winter weather. Here where we live we are about 1/2 an hour from the outskirts of London. I can be in Lambeth in 1/2 hour from here .On the 401 doing at least 100 k's
I would imagine in 1865 it would have taken a good days drive to make the same trip. And another to drive back home .Which might have been slower depending on what you were carrying. So winter trips would not be made.
Just a few of the things that this project has made me think about. I am thinking more about what we take for granted, more about what we waste on a regular basis. How much free time we have that we waste. I am thinking about food and how and why some foods are prepared and when. What foods winter over and what foods need to be used up before winter. It is telling that since we have started this project how little spare time we have. We are constantly working. And have little spare time at all. Every day things are time consuming . But they also come with a satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment. When you pop open a jar of home made whatever it is so much different than something you just payed for. You appreciate what that jar holds. And the work it took to fill it .

Ken here, I've spent the last two days cleaning out the basement and preparing it for the winter's wood. I'm also cleaning up outside so things are neat and tidy before the snow flies. It's not just the physical labour involved in cleaning things up, it's the forethought involved as well. It isn't enough to pick things up from one place and pile 'em up in another, I did that last year and that pile is still awaiting my attention on top of the other stuff for this year. That old saying " a place for everything and everything in it's place" means something different for me now. It isn't just neat tidy storage sheds, cut lawns, clean tidy houses and such. It also means, at least to me, that you have only the things you need and no more.

Tomorrow I'll be hunting up the maple syrup equipment and setting aside in our garden shed in preparation for sap in the spring. Why now, simply because I can find everything now without having to guess where it is or moving six feet of snow to get it. The list includes the sap buckets, spiles, sap storage bins, fire boxes, the bricks, stones and iron frame to make the boiler, assorted buckets, fire pokers and other miscellaneous equipment. It should take me about two hours to secure this equipment and save me about two days worth of searching in the spring when we need to set up for sap. This reminds me of another old saying " a time for everything". It would seem the Victorians were wiser than we thought.

That's it for me, I now return you to your regularly scheduled blogger, the lovely and talented Margaret. :-)

So as we all prepare for another winter and another Christmas season we seem to be thinking more about where and when and how. I for one am appreciating the efforts that simple tasks take . I am looking forward to winter and all of its challanges. And some free time so I can beat the pants off of my beautiful husband when we have time to play scrabble .
See you soon.