Wife n wood

Occo370 said:

I agree my help is usually my 4 year old. It's great but takes twice as long.

Click to expand...

same here, about age 5 or 6, though, they actually start being more help than work. Still can't reach very high on a stack, but still helpful. I think that by age 10 mine ought to be able to do everything on his own, lol.

My wife has helped me out the past 2 Sundays and I really appreciate the extra set of hands. We are cutting ash on the outside edge of a cornfield. We cut down the trees, cut them to length and split the wood right there with a maul. Go home and stack it.
Very nice set up!

The wife helps when "she" wants to, not much help right now being 8 months pregnant. My daughter of 12 is my big helper, she helped stack about 4 cord this year. Did the rest myself. Now the 6y/o boy.............forget it. All the whinning and complaining and me yelling at him to pull his weight is sometimes not worth it. He's like his mother and helps when "he" wants to. The babe is 2 and she will out stack any two year old in her weight class!! LOL.

It's nice to have help but I don't count on it. You get very inventive when you work alone.

helped my dad from age 5-12 (when we moved, no more wood stove) couldn't split or stack much at first, by 12 I did the stacking while he split, and I brought all of it in to the stove.

My two year old helps too! She picks up the kindling and puts it in a pile for me. I was pretty useful until about six-seven months pregnant, then I just started doing inside stuff. By month eight I think I was still getting my own spoon for my ice cream, but that's about it. =P

My husband usually quits helping when I start nagging about him not stacking tight enough.

~Rose

Doing the "wood work" is my escape. I really dont want help unless I ask cause its needed to progress. My wife respects that. As life moves sometimes we all need space to escape....for me the outside work fits the bill.

The only help I get is if it's too cold :-S Get ya lazy butt up and make it warmer... Unfortunately, no additional stacker/splitter/haulers here, just me, myself, and I....

I work alone and I am OK with that.

My 11 year old son does a lot of the stacking - more then I some years. This year he also brought about 1.5 cord into the attached garage and stacked it nicely in the corner by himself. Sometimes he just does it, sometimes I have to remind him. More often then not he does it without me having to say anything.

’bert said:

My 11 year old son does a lot of the stacking - more then I some years. This year he also brought about 1.5 cord into the attached garage and stacked it nicely in the corner by himself. Sometimes he just does it, sometimes I have to remind him. More often then not he does it without me having to say anything.

Click to expand...

I can't wait till my boy grows up a bit and is not so... well 6y/o and understands, how and why we work together, a little better.

It's the age I think, some days he's up earlier does his chores and more without a peep and smiles and loves it, other days I have to follow him around just to replace the trash bag, stand over him and watch and it still takes 10min.

My 13 yr. old will forget to put on shoes before going to school! I love 'em with all my heart, but Serenity says 'work alone'. Damn, my back hurts!!

Flatbedford said:

I work alone and I am OK with that.

Click to expand...

+1, only one person to manage when you work alone. There's something to be said for quiet solitude. Ole Dick Proenneke was on to something, methinks.

I came home yesterday and there was already a blazing fire going in the insert. She loaded from my shoulder season load of maple, black walnut and cedar. Had a great fire going. She always surprises me!

’bert said:

My 11 year old son does a lot of the stacking - more then I some years. This year he also brought about 1.5 cord into the attached garage and stacked it nicely in the corner by himself. Sometimes he just does it, sometimes I have to remind him. More often then not he does it without me having to say anything.

Click to expand...

An 11 y/o showing some initiative? You're doing something right.

I have a bad back so my 15 year old has been helping me do a lot of things for a few years now. We just bought our house in April and he knew we had to cut and split some wood. Yesterday he came home and saw me in the back yard splitting the wood myself, he came up and pinched me to see if it was actually me doing it....lol. He's going to stack it properly today (I just stacked it next to the spot I was splitting it not on the wood pile yet). Good kid, decided to surprise him....lol.

ckarotka said:

The wife helps when "she" wants to, not much help right now being 8 months pregnant.

Click to expand...

Pics, or it didn't happen.


BTW, the 12 yo may be quite effective in bringing around 'boundless energy fueled by emerging testoterone' in a few years. . . but you may have to feed them and keep them focused on the work instead of the daughter . . .

My kids ( all in their 20s now) helped a lot back in the day. One memory I have is of a 4-5 yr old helping with the splitter. We were splitting, throwing the split wood into the tractor bucket, then onto a dump truck, then on up to the house. As each of the other three lost interest, or wandered off, the littlest stayed with me the longest. Sometimes for hours. I took the picture on the left last year, he was flying, yeah, I'm proud of him.
As for the wife. If I leave logs cut or quartered that she can move, before I can get back to them, usually within 2 days they're split and stacked. She likes the house 72, and is willing to work for it, and no I'm not posting pictures of her working!!

My wife does the worst part as far as I am concerned, as I split and leave a pile in the driveway she will move it all with a wheelbarrow to the other side of the house and dump it where I can easily stack it. The kids aren't too helpful yet, but they will be.

Mrs. Flatbedford has helped me with pruning and a takedown or two around the house. I do the splitting and stacking alone. Don't tell her I posted this, but here is a picture of her wielding an axe when we took down the neighbor's Maple.

My wife does alot of the stacking, provided that I make the splits small enough. I do the felling, limbing, bucking, hauling, splitting and hauling. She complains that I spend too much time working on firewood...I just stare at her whne she says that...she still hasn't figured it out.

My 7year old daughte is really gungo ho about helping me wiht it this year, but she gets bored fairly quickly...a few wheelbarrows from the splitting area to the house and she wants to stack instead...so I let her do it and then help her fix her mistakes so she learns how to do it right.