I watched as my 11-year-old son tightens down a sheepshank knot on a sled loaded with firewood. The two-year-old team of oxen stand ready to move forward up a 14% grade on a 1/4 mile trek toward home and the wood pile. Five feet of snow has fallen over the remaining part of February into the first week of March. A sled trail of packed snow reaches from the circular turn around of our log landing area out towards our home. This packed trail of snow facilitates the easy transfer of cut firewood to its final destination via our homemade sled. The load now readied, my son commands the oxen to move forward, and they start out at a trot. He runs alongside the sled and then hops on as the team puts their heads down and slows their pace leaning heavily into the yoke. After 100 yards the hill levels a bit, and he stops them for a short rest to catch their breath.
The day before I had felled and limbed up several dead standing trees. I had then cut logs 10 to 16 feet in length. My son, carrying his axe, had waded through the snow with a logging chain in the other hand to hook up the logs in preparation for my arrival with the ox team. Then he checked the logs over for any remaining limbs and cut them off while the team and I crossed through a creek a rod (16.7 feet) wide and weaved our way through mature timber. We moved the last short distance up a 35% hill through shallower snow still reaching at times up to the oxen’s chests.
As we reached the first log, I spun the oxen 180 degrees in place. My son then ran the other end of the logging chain through the yoke’s iron ring and attached the grab hook onto the appropriate link. With a verbal command the team moved forward down the hill following in the trail they had made coming up. They hesitated briefly at the icy water’s edge, then quickly plunged in while I stood off to one side and waited for them to cross. I followed by leaping onto a fallen log with my caulked boots, ran along it, and sprang over the remaining distance to the far bank. Trotting along behind the chained log, I followed as the oxen pulled it to the landing area to join the other logs they had skidded out earlier in the day. I stopped the team with a verbal command, backed them up, and hooked the log. The chain was left to drag behind the oxen as they trotted along behind me following the skid trail to repeat the same process a log length further up the hill.
Hardly two months earlier we had started out on this endeavor not ever having trained a team of oxen armed only with the knowledge of others’ experiences contained within a book.
Why would one resort to such an unconventional method of procuring firewood? I suggest that if necessity is the mother of invention, then surely economics drive eccentricity. Allow me to share how this concept has unfolded in our lives over the past decade.Continue reading“Eccentricity: A Viable Solution, by Kit Law”
