Loaded, unloaded, and stacked four face cord of hardwood. 4 degrees with windchills below 0. I can hardly move. New update:

[Faith-manor]

This I the kind of thing that makes your brain scream, "Why am I in Michigan???" 😱💨🌨🌬🌪❄

I hurt all over. It is so hard on joints when even your LLBean parka and flannel lined jeans doesn't keep you warm enough. The things that bend end up wanting to seize up.

But we are going through $150 a week in propane during this snap, but we can actually heat the house on about $40 a week with the wood boiler. Normally, we get our wood in the summer and fall. This year none of our suppliers had wood for locals. They were making huge money shipping it to the Detroit area. We just now managed to find six face cord. We still have two more to get, and I am going to be too sore to manage it tomorrow when temps and wind hills will be worse. Maybe Monday afternoon.

I had a warm bath and a couple cups of hot tea. I am still not warm. So off to bed under a pile of quilts.

Stay warm everyone, and remember, Michigan is drop dead gorgeous. Life on the Great Lakes is amazing, our outdoors from April-October are da bomb. But really, just go live some place else, and come visit here.when the weather is fine!!! 😀 

update: So I just went out to feed the boiler because dh is in a conference call for a work related outage. I managed to smash my right hand between a couple logs. Badly. I think my middle finger is broken.

I am supposed to have a miniconcert on Sunday by zoom. Sigh. Not sure how great my interpretation of Chopin, Mendelssohn, and Rachmaninoff will be with a finger in a splint! 

Edited January 25, 2022 by Faith-manor

[prairiewindmomma]

You are a Queen.

I triggered my sciatica trimming a tree and couldn’t even finish stacking the branches.

Take photos of this. Every time I feel nostalgic about moving closer to family I look a photo of me hip deep in snow shoveling off the deck and I am over it. 🙂 

[Miss Tick]

Brr. Just thinking about that makes my fingers and toes go numb.

[math teacher]

I can't even imagine!! I don't have the right clothes for cold weather, and by cold weather I mean below 55 degrees Fahrenheit. LOL It's a good thing I don't live where it's really cold.

[popmom]

20 minutes ago, math teacher said:

I can't even imagine!! I don't have the right clothes for cold weather, and by cold weather I mean below 55 degrees Fahrenheit. LOL It's a good thing I don't live where it's really cold.

Same here! 

150 a week in propane?? Yikes! @Faith-manor how does a wood boiler work? I'm intrigued.

[ScoutTN]

Yikes!
Alabama will be better in the winter, for sure! 

Edited January 23, 2022 by ScoutTN

[Faith-manor]

32 minutes ago, popmom said:

Same here! 

150 a week in propane?? Yikes! @Faith-manor how does a wood boiler work? I'm intrigued.

Since I can't sleep, I will explain. When we bought this place, and old church, since it had 30 ft ceilings, we were able to rip out the existing floors, put in the framing and pex piping for radiant floor heat, and put a propane boiler to heat and circulate the water. That boiler is in the basement. We built a shed, and put a wood boiler inside (Michigan code, it had to 20 ft - if memory serves- from the house). The wood boiler holds enough hardwood logs for six hours of heat during the day which keeps the house at 72. At night we stock it up and make sure the damper is 100% closed so it slow burns for eight hours. It keeps the night heat at about 67. One of us has to be up by 7 am if not a little sooner in this weather to stock it again before the fire goes out and the coals get cold.

It is definitely cheaper for heat since there is no natural gas out here. But now that our sons are adults and living their lives, 54 year old me post-car-accident with some issues and 58 year old hubby are the folks exclusively doing this wood thing. It isn't so bad in the summer. One year my brother had to have a tree taken down, a HUGE maple, and once the tree company felled it, we cut it into log lengths, split them, and hauled them bit by bit from his house (two blocks away) with our hefty riding lawn mower and a large yard wagon (metal). LOL, I enjoyed driving the contraption. Unloading and stacking was okay in the warmer weather, and we didn't have to get all of it moved in one day. Bro let us move it at our leisure so I didn't end up so sore.

Mil has a fireplace as well, and we hauled 1/4 of a face cord to her house and stacked it on her front porch so she can have fires when Mark is there to build them for her. When we arrived, her furnace had conked out (not good in this weather) so while Mark fixed it, I built a fire so her living room and kitchen would warm up quickly.

[popmom]

6 minutes ago, Faith-manor said:

Since I can't sleep, I will explain. When we bought this place, and old church, since it had 30 ft ceilings, we were able to rip out the existing floors, put in the framing and pex piping for radiant floor heat, and put a propane boiler to heat and circulate the water. That boiler is in the basement. We built a shed, and put a wood boiler inside (Michigan code, it had to 20 ft - if memory serves- from the house). The wood boiler holds enough hardwood logs for six hours of heat during the day which keeps the house at 72. At night we stock it up and make sure the damper is 100% closed so it slow burns for eight hours. It keeps the night heat at about 67. One of us has to be up by 7 am if not a little sooner in this weather to stock it again before the fire goes out and the coals get cold.

It is definitely cheaper for heat since there is no natural gas out here. But now that our sons are adults and living their lives, 54 year old me post-car-accident with some issues and 58 year old hubby are the folks exclusively doing this wood thing. It isn't so bad in the summer. One year my brother had to have a tree taken down, a HUGE maple, and once the tree company felled it, we cut it into log lengths, split them, and hauled them bit by bit from his house (two blocks away) with our hefty riding lawn mower and a large yard wagon (metal). LOL, I enjoyed driving the contraption. Unloading and stacking was okay in the warmer weather, and we didn't have to get all of it moved in one day. Bro let us move it at our leisure so I didn't end up so sore.

Mil has a fireplace as well, and we hauled 1/4 of a face cord to her house and stacked it on her front porch so she can have fires when Mark is there to build them for her. When we arrived, her furnace had conked out (not good in this weather) so while Mark fixed it, I built a fire so her living room and kitchen would warm up quickly.

I’ve been searching online, too. Thank you for explaining. 
I surely hope you get some good zzzz’s after all that!

Edited January 23, 2022 by popmom

[wintermom]

Glad you were able to get wood! Watch out for repetitive injury from the stacking, though. My physiotherapist told me it's common to get "tennis elbow" from stacking wood. I got it from walking a very strong German Shephard puppy. 😅

I love the smell of wood fire, though it's not great for my allergies. Hope the weather warms up for you soon. We had -35C this morning. The only good thing about that temp is that it's easy to convert, I think it's about the same as -35F. 😉 

[Faith-manor]

22 minutes ago, wintermom said:

Glad you were able to get wood! Watch out for repetitive injury from the stacking, though. My physiotherapist told me it's common to get "tennis elbow" from stacking wood. I got it from walking a very strong German Shephard puppy. 😅

I love the smell of wood fire, though it's not great for my allergies. Hope the weather warms up for you soon. We had -35C this morning. The only good thing about that temp is that it's easy to convert, I think it's about the same as -35F. 😉 

Good to know. I think this coming summer, I am going to hire every high school student who needs some extra cash to come do it. That will eat into the savings, and especially because I will buy them pizza and pop as well, but it would be so much better for my body. Right now I feel like I need a jacuzzi, followed by the kind of massage that is NOT relaxing, followed by 10 physical therapy sessions. I am sure I will feel better in the morning.

Edited January 23, 2022 by Faith-manor

[popmom]

@Faith-manor I just went outside with my dog, and my heart was warmed. This is probably the coldest week of the season here in AL, and a bunch of my neighbors are outside living it up! Multiple households in different directions! LOL They've got the string lights up, fire pits going, guests, kids... I love it! Personally, I'll stay inside by my fireplace. It's in the 20's at 9pm.

 I know people think I'm crazy when I talk about how outdoorsy people are here (it came up on the Wuhan virus thread at some point)--no matter the weather--but it's true. There is no season more than another that keeps people indoors here. @Faith-manor you are going to love it here. 🙂

Edited January 23, 2022 by popmom

[Faith-manor]

18 minutes ago, popmom said:

@Faith-manor I just went outside with my dog, and my heart was warmed. This is probably the coldest week of the season here in AL, and a bunch of my neighbors are outside living it up! Multiple households in different directions! LOL They've got the string lights up, fire pits going, guests, kids... I love it! Personally, I'll stay inside by my fireplace. It's in the 20's at 9pm.

 I know people think I'm crazy when I talk about how outdoorsy people are here (it came up on the Wuhan virus thread at some point)--no matter the weather--but it's true. There is no season more than another that keeps people indoors here. @Faith-manor you are going to love it here. 🙂

LOL, until the sun went down, dd and fam were outside around their fire pit. She was Michigan raised, he was Penn raised and their early marriage years were in the Albany, NY region. So it is balmy for them! 😂

I am very much looking forward to our retirement there. Dd and I are planning her raised bed gardens. With three growing seasons, she has mega plans. Cool weather crops March -May, peppers, tomatos, eggplants in the summer, and more salad greens in the fall. She says the blueberries and black caps on the property will probably be ripe in May! Faint. Be still my heart! We get blueberries mid July here, and black caps as well with full black berries in August.

I will definitely miss the Michigan cherries and peaches though! None of the hotter weather varieties of those grown south of the Ohio River Valley are any good comparatively speaking. 😉

[Starr]

I'm feeling flash back cold reading this. You are amazing! I've been dealing with frozen pipes in northern NY from Texas. The below zero temps won't stop and the fuel company didn't get our tank filled soon enough. I m praying nothing bursts.

[Faith-manor]

4 minutes ago, Starr said:

I'm feeling flash back cold reading this. You are amazing! I've been dealing with frozen pipes in northern NY from Texas. The below zero temps won't stop and the fuel company didn't get our tank filled soon enough. I m praying nothing bursts.

I am so sorry to hear that! I hope everything will be okay.

[popmom]

11 minutes ago, Faith-manor said:

LOL, until the sun went down, dd and fam were outside around their fire pit. She was Michigan raised, he was Penn raised and their early marriage years were in the Albany, NY region. So it is balmy for them! 😂

I am very much looking forward to our retirement there. Dd and I are planning her raised bed gardens. With three growing seasons, she has mega plans. Cool weather crops March -May, peppers, tomatos, eggplants in the summer, and more salad greens in the fall. She says the blueberries and black caps on the property will probably be ripe in May! Faint. Be still my heart! We get blueberries mid July here, and black caps as well with full black berries in August.

I will definitely miss the Michigan cherries and peaches though! None of the hotter weather varieties of those grown south of the Ohio River Valley are any good comparatively speaking. 😉

❤️❤️❤️

If you’re willing to throw some frost blankets over your crops in the winter, you can grow year round. 🙂

[Faith-manor]

21 minutes ago, popmom said:

❤️❤️❤️

If you’re willing to throw some frost blankets over your crops in the winter, you can grow year round. 🙂

That would be so much fun! I will tell her.

[Frances]

My dad cut, hauled, and stacked all of the wood to heat my parent’s midwest home right up until he died from cancer at 78. They had a wood furnace with oil back up. Friends who owned land would let him come out for free and clean up their dead wood. Growing up, going out into the woods on a Saturday morning and cutting wood with the wood splitter he built and throwing into the truck was my very favorite chore. Stacking it outside back at home wasn’t as much fun. But some was also stored in the wood cellar in our basement and throwing it down the chute into the basement was lots of fun. 

Of course the vast majority of this work as done in the fall, not the dead of winter in freezing cold temps.

[Faith-manor]

7 hours ago, Frances said:

My dad cut, hauled, and stacked all of the wood to heat my parent’s midwest home right up until he died from cancer at 78. They had a wood furnace with oil back up. Friends who owned land would let him come out for free and clean up their dead wood. Growing up, going out into the woods on a Saturday morning and cutting wood with the wood splitter he built and throwing into the truck was my very favorite chore. Stacking it outside back at home wasn’t as much fun. But some was also stored in the wood cellar in our basement and throwing it down the chute into the basement was lots of fun. 

Of course the vast majority of this work as done in the fall, not the dead of winter in freezing cold temps.

Right. That is what got me, and my muscles. I am soooooooo sore today.

My wrists, fore arms, and shoulders hurt so much that I am just tolerating typing on this kindle, but I couldn't stand to play the piano when I got up this morning. That is a big no no for me as a professional pianist, so we simply have to get our 2023 wood this summer or fall. The DNR will do a "take fallen trees for free" day in the late summer, so we are just going to have to head out to state land, and do it ourselves. I feel bad for dh though because he works so many hours for work and does the maintenance on his mother's home. So adding "must go chain saw trees in the forest, cut small enough to haul, and then split it all at home plus stacking" is hard. We have always, until this year, been able to buy as much as we want at $40 a face cord from local Mennonite farms/lumber businesses. It was shocker when we couldn't do it this year.

[KungFuPanda]

That is SO MUCH hard work. People don’t realize how time consuming it is. I work for a landscaper who sells firewood. Customers can buy on site and load themselves or have it delivered. Stacking is extra. Every piece of wood a customer takes home  involves so much work from harvesting to re-selling. Right now, the wood shortage (due to everyone burning more on quarantine) and the labor shortage are a real problem. A face cord of oak is going for $390, delivery is anywhere from $45-$75 depending upon zip code, then stacking is $70/hour with a one hour minimum and pro-rated after that. 

I cringed when I saw how MUCH you loaded in the bitter cold. You must have been out there for hours. 

[Grace Hopper]

Visiting the UP is on my bucket list but not til the dead center of summer. 
 

You are a good woman, Faith Manor. Just hearing this makes me miss my teenage boys. Hope you warm up and your muscle aches soon subside. I will be humming some Lynyrd Skynyrd for you today.  

[Faith-manor]

35 minutes ago, Grace Hopper said:

Visiting the UP is on my bucket list but not til the dead center of summer. 
 

You are a good woman, Faith Manor. Just hearing this makes me miss my teenage boys. Hope you warm up and your muscle aches soon subside. I will be humming some Lynyrd Skynyrd for you today.  

Thanks! Dh, the bread maker, feels bad about it (and I really wish he wouldn't because I volunteered knowing that doing that in the cold was going to be hard on me) and is making his gourmet GF sandwich buns. LOL, I am willing to admit to being impish enough to take just a little bit of advantage of his good will because those buns are yummy. 😁 He has ground beef thawing and will be grilling hamburgers in the boiler.

That is the great thing about the boiler. Get a good bed of coals going, and you can use grates in it to roast food on. One of our favorites is buffalo chicken made with Frank's buffalo wing sauce, and chicken breast cut into wide strips. Very, very good!!!

[Faith-manor]

49 minutes ago, KungFuPanda said:

That is SO MUCH hard work. People don’t realize how time consuming it is. I work for a landscaper who sells firewood. Customers can buy on site and load themselves or have it delivered. Stacking is extra. Every piece of wood a customer takes home  involves so much work from harvesting to re-selling. Right now, the wood shortage (due to everyone burning more on quarantine) and the labor shortage are a real problem. A face cord of oak is going for $390, delivery is anywhere from $45-$75 depending upon zip code, then stacking is $70/hour with a one hour minimum and pro-rated after that. 

I cringed when I saw how MUCH you loaded in the bitter cold. You must have been out there for hours. 

Our trailer can only haul one facecord at a time. Well it could haul more, but the towing capacity of my Equinox limits how much we are willing to try. So it was about 40 minutes of loading in that cold, six mile drive home, 40 minutes of unloading, and doing that three more times. I think when I looked at the clock, five hours in the actual cold, and there was a transit trip when the trailer was empty to McD's a few miles north of the supplier to grab a couple of hot mochas, and to warm up just a bit more inside the car before getting out again.

I do not relish going out to state land for wood this summer/fall. For that part of it, we can't take hired teens because there is too much liability when  working with chain saws and inexperienced kids around them. But once we have a load on the trailer, it is okay to let them use the log splitter back at home and stack it especially because we have a neighbor that is very experienced and a really good guy who won't mind pulling up a lawn chair with an iced tea and slice of pizza to supervise them when we are in the woods. It will be worth it to pay their wages and feed them. And if we can find an experienced teen to go with us to the woods, that would be for the better so I don't get quite so stove, and can limit how much I carry.

In years past when we had teen sons at home to help, we burned wood exclusively. 15-20 face cord depending on the quality of wood. 

What we bought yesterday was very good oak and ash. It was leftovers from an Amish sawmill/lumber business. They had cut and split it, and had sorted it into face cord stacks. But because it was done so late in the season, and very few people here are heating with wood anymore, they didn't have a stream of people standing in line for it. They just wanted it gone. That is why we got it for $40 a face. I am sure had it been fall, and they had bothered to advertise, they would have gotten a whole lot more for it!

I always laugh when I here folks from the city who have never lived rural a day in their lives say they wished they could homestead! 😂😂😂 uhm, ya. Sure. It isn't a bed of roses. Get ready for the hard labor!

My dad had an alternative heating business so we grew up accustomed to solar panels on the roof with a battery bank, wood stoves, fireplaces, pellet stoves, corn stoves....whatever he wanted to show off in our living room. My brother and I are not strangers to cutting, splitting, and stacking wood. But, I never got good with an axe! I manage making kindling with my nice Stihl hatchett. I am wretched at splitting with an axe. Thank goodness we have the gas powered log splitter! Even dh is not willing to be enough of a "Pa Ingalls" to go at it the old fashioned way. We have two nice Stihl chainsaws too.

[KungFuPanda]

1 hour ago, Faith-manor said:

Our trailer can only haul one facecord at a time. Well it could haul more, but the towing capacity of my Equinox limits how much we are willing to try. So it was about 40 minutes of loading in that cold, six mile drive home, 40 minutes of unloading, and doing that three more times. I think when I looked at the clock, five hours in the actual cold, and there was a transit trip when the trailer was empty to McD's a few miles north of the supplier to grab a couple of hot mochas, and to warm up just a bit more inside the car before getting out again.

I do not relish going out to state land for wood this summer/fall. For that part of it, we can't take hired teens because there is too much liability when  working with chain saws and inexperienced kids around them. But once we have a load on the trailer, it is okay to let them use the log splitter back at home and stack it especially because we have a neighbor that is very experienced and a really good guy who won't mind pulling up a lawn chair with an iced tea and slice of pizza to supervise them when we are in the woods. It will be worth it to pay their wages and feed them. And if we can find an experienced teen to go with us to the woods, that would be for the better so I don't get quite so stove, and can limit how much I carry.

In years past when we had teen sons at home to help, we burned wood exclusively. 15-20 face cord depending on the quality of wood. 

What we bought yesterday was very good oak and ash. It was leftovers from an Amish sawmill/lumber business. They had cut and split it, and had sorted it into face cord stacks. But because it was done so late in the season, and very few people here are heating with wood anymore, they didn't have a stream of people standing in line for it. They just wanted it gone. That is why we got it for $40 a face. I am sure had it been fall, and they had bothered to advertise, they would have gotten a whole lot more for it!

I always laugh when I here folks from the city who have never lived rural a day in their lives say they wished they could homestead! 😂😂😂 uhm, ya. Sure. It isn't a bed of roses. Get ready for the hard labor!

My dad had an alternative heating business so we grew up accustomed to solar panels on the roof with a battery bank, wood stoves, fireplaces, pellet stoves, corn stoves....whatever he wanted to show off in our living room. My brother and I are not strangers to cutting, splitting, and stacking wood. But, I never got good with an axe! I manage making kindling with my nice Stihl hatchett. I am wretched at splitting with an axe. Thank goodness we have the gas powered log splitter! Even dh is not willing to be enough of a "Pa Ingalls" to go at it the old fashioned way. We have two nice Stihl chainsaws too.

$40 a face cord is so unreal to me. I don’t know when this area saw prices like that. We only sell hickory or oak. The oak is almost ten times that before delivery and hickory is more. Our delivery area includes D.C. and almost up to Baltimore. We have to get it from suppliers as far away as West Virginia.  It’s been a scramble this year since we have to buy wood that was cut two years ago. Our winter has been colder than normal too, so that just adds to the fun. 
 

The trucks hold 3 1/2 cords and some days all three trucks are dispatched. Every single person there prefers the landscaping work, but this keeps everyone employed through winter. 

Edited January 23, 2022 by KungFuPanda

[Faith-manor]

Just now, KungFuPanda said:

$40 a face cord is so unreal to me. I don’t know when this area saw prices like that. We only sell hickory or oak. The oak is almost ten times that before delivery and hickory is more. Our delivery area includes D.C. and almost up to Baltimore. We have to get it from suppliers as far away as West Virginia.  It’s been a scramble this year since we have to buy wood that was cut two years ago. Our winter has been colder than normal too, so that just adds to the fun. 

Sounds like a real supply issue. Transporting wood long haul is super, duper expensive. Here there is an over abundant supply right around the corner in terms of free wood on state land, and so many farms having their own woodlot. It has only been this year that it has been an issue. I was shocked when two of our three normal suppliers had transitioned to making lumber or selling firewood to Detroit Area dealers. I guess they are really making a killing on that. They did not say what people are paying down there for this wood. I have often wondered if some of the campgrounds are buying it up, and reselling it. Camping is at an all time here thanks to the pandemic. We have seen and heard of campgrounds selling firewood to campers for $1-2 dollars a log. Hard to imagine paying $10 or more for every time they want to sit around a campfire or roast a hot dog.

[prairiewindmomma]

I am close to commercial logging state forests (so plenty of supply) and a cord of wood for seasoned fir is $300. Mixed woods are $320-350. It’s easily up $100 from last year. 
 

I just checked Facebook marketplace back in the Midwest, and the cheapest I saw for hedge is $240, oak and walnut are both $210. 
 

$40/cord is so mind blowing. 

[Faith-manor]

2 hours ago, prairiewindmomma said:

I am close to commercial logging state forests (so plenty of supply) and a cord of wood for seasoned fir is $300. Mixed woods are $320-350. It’s easily up $100 from last year. 
 

I just checked Facebook marketplace back in the Midwest, and the cheapest I saw for hedge is $240, oak and walnut are both $210. 
 

$40/cord is so mind blowing. 

It really is. Just remember that this was per face, so a full cord would have been between $120-200 depending on how generous the faces were. Most of the local guys are not bothered about precision so some faces can be huge and others a little scanty. I would say that we had two of the faces that were generous and more than four ft high. The one that was rounds cut from the ends of logs, was definitely scant in terms of volume, but by burn potential, good value. Those rounds were all top quality red oak, cherry, and maple. Some of the ash though, just pieces here and there, are nothing but kindling because they were trees hit by the emerald ash borer so they are gopher wood as the saying goes. Ash can't be transported across county lines except as kiln dried lumber due to that rotten insect. So part of the reason we got those face so cheap was that they were blended with good ash pieces, but that ash can't be shipped. Very little damaged wood in there, but that is the law, and I do not blame the DNR for instituting that ban. It is possible if he didn't have so many of the rounds which are not popular with fireplace people as well as some ash to get rid of, we would have paid a whole lot more for that wood.

He has two more face at that price, and I bet Mark will buy it Monday if it is still there. The thing is, I have a zoom mini-concert on Sunday afternoon next week. I can't be sore and worn out because I am performing. I really cannot help him, but I feel horrible about making him do it alone. I need to see if I can find a willing teen who is also willing to mask when in the car with dh. This could be like hunting for a needle in a haystack. But, if we got the other two face, we could make it through March (most of the really nasty temps will be over by then) and save a lot of propane. Spring break isn't until the first week of March. Otherwise, this wouldn't be an issue because youngest ds really does not mind helping his dad.

Edited January 23, 2022 by Faith-manor

[goldberry]

ONE cord does me in!  You are a better woman!  $150 cord for pine here.

[Lucy the Valiant]

$350 cord delivered here in New England - sometimes $300 if you pick it up yourself. Big jump this year in prices. Pine is much cheaper, but we don't burn pine indoors. With DH working from home, we will run out this year, and probably dip into next year's supply. Argh.

I'm impressed, too, Faith-manor - all our friends around here convert to pellets when the teenagers move out. 😉 

(We also have the ban on transporting across state lines, which has cost us more than one good deal on firewood, but I do fully understand and respect the law. We can typically bring wood south but not north.)

[Faith-manor]

1 hour ago, Lucy the Valiant said:

$350 cord delivered here in New England - sometimes $300 if you pick it up yourself. Big jump this year in prices. Pine is much cheaper, but we don't burn pine indoors. With DH working from home, we will run out this year, and probably dip into next year's supply. Argh.

I'm impressed, too, Faith-manor - all our friends around here convert to pellets when the teenagers move out. 😉 

(We also have the ban on transporting across state lines, which has cost us more than one good deal on firewood, but I do fully understand and respect the law. We can typically bring wood south but not north.)

Pellets are nice, but this is a huge wood boiler, not a woodstove, so it isn't made for pellets. We don't burn pine either because the sap builds up. We save any pine we run across for the fire pit. But, you really can't cook over pine either, so often we put it in the wood chipper and then mulch around the apple trees and whatnot.

[goldberry]

We have massive pine and aspen where I live.  Aspen is cleaner but usually $50 more a cord.  I had no idea it could be so expensive elsewhere!

[Faith-manor]

I am still sore but doing better. I have been keeping the fire stoked today. It nearly went out last night and the house was 61 when we woke up which just feels ridiculously cold when it is 10°F outside and the wind howls.

I am seriously OVER winter already.