Home Heating With Wood

Every winter we cut firewood to heat our home.  Although we cut it in winter we didn’t burn it until the following winter, always staying a season ahead.  It’s been said, with a fair amount of truth that using wood for home heating warms you several times, once when you cut it, once when you split it, and again when you burn it.

One winter when I was about 13 or 14 we were working in the woods.  On this particular day I was the designated tractor driver.  Our farm tractor at the time was an Allis Chalmers C model with a narrow, or row crop, front end.  The two front wheels were very close together at the front center of the tractor, as opposed to in line with the rear wheels.  My father and oldest brother were felling the trees.  My job was to attach a log chain around the base of the tree near the just cut section and tow it to the edge of the woods where there was a frozen pond.  Once I deposited it there, I, or someone else, would unhook the chain and I would return to the felling area for another.  While I was gone two or three more of my brothers would reduce the previous log to 16” pieces for transport to our home.  The photo is of an Allis Chalmers C Model with a narrow front end.

On one of my many trips out the rough logging road through the woods a strange thing happened.  The path was rough and bumpy with no thoughts of smoothing it.  It was merely a path through the woods to haul the logs out.  I was towing a log when I went over a slight rounded hill in the pathway.  As I started down the opposite side of this speed bump which was no more than a foot or so high, the tractor began to slide to the left down the incline and ahead.  Within a second or two I had slid past a tree with the engine section of the tractor.  It continued ahead and downhill until the clutch lever of the tractor bumped up against the tree trunk.  This photo is as if you were sitting on the seat of an Allis Chalmers C Model farm tractor.  The clutch is the lever at center left.  The levers on the right are individual rear wheel brakes.  The arrow points at the transmission lever.  The little button beneath the gauge and to the right is an on/off switch.  The round circle lever right at the tip of the arrow is the starter lever, pushed with the right foot.

There I sat.  The tractor clutch used to stop its forward movement was tight against the tree trunk.  I couldn’t push it.  The tractor continued spinning its wheels attempting to go forward which it couldn’t do.  After a few seconds I shut off the tractor engine.  I then placed the transmission in reverse and pushed the starter in an attempt to move the tractor backwards turning the engine over with the starter.  I even hoped the engine would start with the transmission in reverse, but it did neither.  Finally I had to give up attempting to move it with its own power.  By gathering enough people of our crew we were able to push it backwards and uphill by hand.  I was then able to back up to the log for a fresh start, easily moved on past the culprit tree that had held me for ransom, and we continued to cut wood as normal for the remainder of the day.