Ok, really it was chop wood, carry wood…

Our new year’s eve day was chilly but bright and sunny, allowing us to spend much of the afternoon outside (a welcome change from the bitterly cold winters we’re used to).

I finally harvested what was left of our rose hips (if you don’t know already: rose hips are the fruit of the rose plant, and are very high in vitamin C – a good food to preserve for the winter). I’d been itching to get at them for quite awhile, but they weren’t ripe and weren’t ripe and weren’t ripe…

Then I went away for a week, and by the time I returned, most of them were overripe and mushy (above). But I still managed to get a decent harvest, which I’ll next need to clean, slice each of them in half and scoop out the seeds, and then place in the dehydrator for drying. (If we’d ended up with a larger batch, I would’ve been tempted to make rose hip syrup or rose hip marmalade. But that’ll have to wait for next year.)

The next and best part of the afternoon consisted of Peter teaching me how to split wood rounds into pieces small enough to fit into our wood stove. I’d been quite nervous about swinging around a heavy sharp object (I’ve been known to bonk), and I’m sure that my first several swings were pretty girlish.

But as I got the feel of the tool and began to feel more confident, my swings improved (as well as my success in actually splitting the wood).

As you can see, we can easily tell which logs are the ones that I split – for some of the more stubborn ones, it took many, many, many tries!

But what a satisfying feeling, at the end of the day, to see the new pile of wood that I helped create (and which will keep us warm for several days). And to continue closing the circle, inch by inch. And as we enter the new year, to be, quite literally, chopping wood and carrying water.