Did you enjoy putting up firewood as a kid?

Nope, hated it! Dad never let me run a saw and my parents never made it any fun (that I can remember).

 

I loved it. Dad never let me run the saw. Said it was because he was self-taught and didn’t know how to teach me right. Looking back, he lived a charmed life when cutting- he has some scary habits, but still cutting at 83. We split mostly by hand. A lot of American Elm to burn back then, so sledge and wedges plus a sharp ax.

 

Live in northern Arizona now but grew up on a farm in northern Iowa close to the Minnesota border. Every year we'd get a storm or two that would take out some trees in what we called our orchard. I never ran the saw at that age or got to split and stack. What I did get to do was load the huge wood stove in the basement of the farmhouse. It was a treat for me in the morning to be the one who warmed up the house.

 

I have vivid memories of helping my grandfather every fall with the firewood. I think that started when I was about 8 years old. He used to pick me up early on Saturday mornings and we’d go cut all day (he’d cut, I’d load his truck) Once everything was back at his house he’d split it and I’d stack it way in the backyard. I was also responsible for bringing in the dry stuff into his basement and cleaning up the inevitable bark scraps that fell everywhere. At my own house my stepfather was happy to take care of the firewood duties by himself. He had an All-Nighter in the basement and an insert upstairs that got used occasionally.

 

I never got to go to the woods and do the getting of the wood with my dad, my dad worked 3rd shift and would stop in the morning and cut wood, when I got older he would get home with a load of rounds in his truck and let me know to unload it (never had to argue with me about it). And I would unload his truck, then as I got older I would try to split what I could with the mual, then he showed me how to use the wood splitter, and over that time i started filling the OWB as well.
Was never really shown how to use the chainsaw, more Just learning by watching. Then I would start cutting wood when no one was home.
Always enjoyed doing it though, slowly learned and progressed as I got older.

Miss, Redneck on the other hand always says how she hated doing firewood growing up, her ma and dad owned and ran there own logging company, so they days they did firewood was the coldest/nastyest days of the year, as he couldn't get in the woods, she told me when I said I wanted to heat with wood that she was fine with it but would not help, I gladly said that's fine I don't mind doing firewood by my self!

 

I started when I was 5 back home in former Yugoslavia. I would feed the stove and stack and bring all the wood. I ran my first saw which was a craftsman at 11 and I took off from there. My kids help with the stacking and they start the fires when I’m not home. I hope they will continue to do when they get older

 

I never much cared for firewood duties as a kid. We got an add on wood furnace in the 70's when oil prices seemed to be climbing (more than my parents liked anyway). My grandparents (also living on the farm) also put in a wood furnace in their basement, so we cut for 2 houses. I was just a kid and I got a stick that was 24" long and a hatchet and was told it was my job to mark out the wood with a hatchet chop so Dad and Grandpa knew where to cut. We also had a buzzsaw behind the Ferguson TO 20 that we used for the smaller limb wood.
I totally enjoy cutting and gathering wood now, though!

 

We didn't heat with wood when I was a kid. I'm not sure why since we definitely weren't well off. In retrospect, I'm glad we didn't because I wouldn't enjoy it as much as I do now. My mother had a knack for taking the fun out of everything.

 

My Parents always had fire places in all their houses. We never did firewood on a large scale so I never really got tired of it. Dad never had a chainsaw so we used Swede saws and were limited to smaller stuff. Dad occasionally bought small lots of firewood in the round but unsplit. That is where I learned my axemanship. When I moved out, I got a small rental house which had a small gas radiator and I put in a potbelly stove. Borrowed my landlords chainsaw and kept us both in firewood from his wood lot. When I got married, the Wif and I built our own house and we put in a Schrader Queen stove. I bought a new Stihl 028 to clear the land with and we have done our own firewood and heated through the winters ever since! When I was young, the firewood was fun. Older now and would not necessarily call it fun but I would use the word fulfilling or perhaps satisfying.

 

I did not because I was the youngest and the resident brush removal tool. That said my brother and I both had to help do all of it. He split, I stacked ect. Dad bought him a used Homelite 360 when he figured he was old enough. I was still the brush monkey. Just for two cutters. lol

 

Must be a fancy rotary phone you have.

 

Yes, but we didn't really do a lot of it either.
The wood stove was just to get the house a little warmer than the coal boiler did when it was real cold.
For a while we had just the fireplace in the living room and then a small cast iron stove took the place of an incinerator (which was pretty much a waste of electricity).
My brother and I chopped with an axe and cut rounds with a two man saw on a saw horse.
Was just one of a long list of farm chore one just had to do on a farm.
All my dad had was an electric saw for many years until he got a Sears gas chain saw. It's still in the garage on a shelf. He probably would have let us older boys use it but no way mom would go along with that.

 

Didn’t have woodstove as a kid. Not sure if I would have liked firewood chores as a kid. I grew up in urban Rhode Island- so now as an adult in a somewhat smaller town, I’m always fascinated by things not associated with city life and firewood chores are definitely one of those things.

 

Yes, I have fond childhood memories of cutting wood as a youngster. When I was about 10 years old, we moved into a house that had a fireplace in the basement. My father was friends with a fella that operated a small engine repair service out of his garage who also sold chainsaws. My father co-owned a lumber yard at the time, so we had access to big trucks. So, we had all the equipment to cut a lot of wood! As a youngster, although I was given the opportunity to run a chainsaw all be myself on occasion, most of my "wood cutting" was most likely focused on loading/unloading the large flatbed truck. Aside from that task, I really enjoyed slitting the wood. We had one of those fancy Wood Chopper II axes. If anyone is familiar with these it consisted of a cast metal head with spring loaded fingers tucked into the axe head that expanded when sunk into the wood causing the two pieces to fly apart. As a young teenager, I thought that was pretty cool. Although I became pretty proficient with this axe, I miss calculated a log one day, overshoot my target and broke the handle. Thinking that I would get into trouble, I got out the wood glue and clamps and proceeded to fix the handle. To my amazement, my glue job worked very well, and I proceeded to split wood using that glued handle for many years after that. I was once told that a good glue job should be as strong if not stronger than the wood itself. I got lucky.

Although I am sure my siblings also hauled wood into the house, I did a lot of the hauling and always felt a great sense of satisfaction seeing the wood box full. To this day, I thoroughly enjoy cutting, splitting and hauling wood and feel the same sense of satisfaction when my piles are full, and I have wood inside awaiting a cozy fire. As for my kids, none of them like cutting wood. With that being said, I would be willing to bet that several of them will burn wood once they are out on their own and paying the gas bill!

 

Some of the best childhood memories.

 

Oddly enough, I enjoy it now. Probably because of the saws. Lol

 

Do not know. The family never used firewood when I was young. I am the odd ball in my family.

 

Yes the saws are a big deal for me. It is part of the hobby of heating with firewood.