THE WOODSHED 



If half the woodshed was treated as a backyard, the other half 

 was reserved for the wood, and here it rose in neatly disposed piles 

 from the twelve-inch pieces to the big four-foot logs, split or not 

 according to the thickness of the tree. We had about forty cords 

 to begin with, from the trees necessarily cut down, and each year the 

 dead wood had to be taken from the forest for fear of fire or accident. 

 Thus we cut on an average about thirty cords annually, and with all 

 our open fires, found no difficulty in consuming it. 



Formerly the horse treadmill went about the country-side from 

 house to house during the winter, filling the sheds with a year's sup- 

 ply of wood. The cheerful buzz of the moving saw, the drop of the 

 falling sticks, the sweet-smelling, golden sawdust on the crisp snow, 

 the animated voices of the men at work, enlivened the winter land- 

 scape. But with this machine only about twelve cords a day could 

 be cut ; so the portable motor or steam saw has taken the place of 

 the treadmill, the long shaft adding its whir to the buzz of the saw, 

 and with this thirty cords can easily be finished in a long day's work. 

 It is certainly more humane and labor-saving, and what is a little 

 more or less odor of gasoline in these automobile days ? 



When the trees are cut down we save the smaller branches and 

 chop them into certain lengths, tying them into bundles with willow 

 withes. These make a quick brilliant flame in the big fire-places 

 on cool autumn evenings or in the damp days of midsummer. 



I never see those huge four-foot logs piled to the roof at the far 



end of the shed without a fleeting vision of our first hearth fire : the 



73 



