Category Archives: Home List

The Boombah Haulage Company

The Boombah Haulage Company, president, CEO, and sole employee.

All those artisanal, hand-crafted heat candies created in the woods behind our house (the Boombah) have to travel to the wood shed somehow to realize their purpose. Yes, they’re pieces of dead trees, but they’ve been diced up into 16-inch lengths for a reason. I generally cut the trees as soon as possible after they die, so they are usually still green and the pieces of future firewood are heavy. So I stack them in the woods for a year or so to begin the drying process. Like a squirrel with little food caches scattered about, I can usually remember where the piles are. I haul them out on a network of foot trails one load at a time on my shoulders. It’s a great workout. I peck away at it when I feel like it.
Continue reading →

Revisiting the Home Electrocution Handbook

(Shed a Little Light)

A couple of years ago I was splitting wood when somehow I twanged something hard in my left arm. I’m still not sure what I did, but it was painful and it got worse before it got better. It was spring, though, so there was plenty of time to heal it up before I needed it for splitting wood again.
Continue reading →

Contemplating the Thermal Properties of a Subarctic Home

(Or “Another blog post for insomniacs.”)

While we spend a lot of time and money working to keep the house heated each day from about mid-September through early May, if you only focus on that you miss some other interesting things that work more subtly on longer cycles.

One Sunday morning in early spring, Rose and I were sitting in the living room reading the newspaper. It was very quiet. The snow had melted, it had yet to green up, and few birds were back. We’d been too lazy to put on music, so it was quiet inside, too. We heard something fall with a clatter to the deck. Surprised, we got up and looked out the window to see a strange piece of metal lying there.
Continue reading →