There is something almost romantic about firewood.
A pile of freshly split logs.
The smell of wood in the sun.
The promise of winter evenings, warmth, and a stove quietly burning inside.
It sounds simple. Almost idyllic.
But making firewood every year is not really the romantic part of slow living.
It is work. Repetitive, physical, sometimes frustrating work.
And like many things here, it quietly teaches you that independence is not a feeling — it is a skill.
During our first season, we ordered the wood already split.
That felt like a good beginning.
All we had to do was stack it, find the right place for it, and make sure it would dry well. Even that was a lesson.
We searched online and found a way of stacking wood called a “hedgehog”.
At first, it looked unnecessarily complicated.
And honestly, in the beginning, it was.
The structure kept reminding us that even something as ordinary as stacking wood has its own logic.
But after a while, our hands learned what our heads were still trying to understand.
The next season, we went a little further.
We learned how to use a chainsaw.
How to split wood with an axe.
How to use wedges for pieces too large and heavy to lift.
How to stop fighting the material and start working with it.
Of course, there are still moments when you need help from people who know more than you do. And that is part of it too.
Living more independently does not mean doing everything alone.
But it does mean learning what you can.
Slowly. Imperfectly. One season at a time.
Now we do not even make kindling the same way anymore.
We go into the forest and collect dry branches from the ground.
We cut them to size, bring them back, and stack them too.
Nothing about it is glamorous.
But when winter comes, and the stove starts burning, all that work is suddenly there in the room with us.
Not as a burden.
As warmth.
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