A speciation event?

Now that I'm a part-time country boy fer sher, it's a major new experience for me and I'm going to be tempted to write a lot about my observations of the nature of nature and the idiocy or wisdom of rural life and all that. For example, today I spent the morning in my neighbor's woods harvesting firewood from the tops where he had a lot cleared and some sustainable logging done. Heating with wood is normal here, and chainsaws in the distance are background music this time of year.

Wood cut in the fall is no good till next winter, but it will be perfect then, and this is a good time to cut it. The understory has died so it's easier to see what's going on and make your way in the woods, and the leaves are off the trees so it's easier to clean up your fire logs. Loggers, in fact, prefer to work in the winter, even with snow on the ground. This time of year, it's not so cold that I didn't sweat a bit working hard, but it does feel cold when you stop. With the sun so low, it feels like it's late in the day, all day.

So, firewood forces you to be very forward looking, storing up not for this winter, but for next. Rural forms of Self-sufficiency in general tend to be like that, very obviously. What I do this fall will have a lot to do with what I can produce from the garden next summer, and from fruit trees in three or four years. I suppose that's true of any career or business one tries to build, but in these particular matters the link between current effort and future prosperity holds little mystery.

Anyway, what I'm thinking of doing is starting a new blog, to be called Windham County, where I can post all this sort of idiocy, and keep Stayin' Alive more or less on topic. Not that I'm always great about that but I'd like to keep it within limits. Let me know if you have any thoughts.