The farmhouse the whole family had worked so hard to restore was ready for winter. It had withstood many winters fully exposed to the winds that swept down the hill in back. I installed a Woodmaster wood burning stove in the kitchen. The cast iron Sears Indestructo coal furnace stood ready in the cellar. I had added one hot air duct ending in the upstairs hall. I had installed a salvaged damper motor with a 12-volt power source to open and close the dampers with thin chains. The mercury switch was in a brand new Honeywell thermostat in the front hall. The chimneys were clean. I had done everything possible.

Our kids had helped stack firewood until every available space in the cellar was filled. I had used my chain saw to cut a hole in the house from the cellar bedrock up through the first floor, the second floor, the attic, and out the roof. The new masonry fireplace, built around the Heatalator, had ducts that vented heat upstairs. We planned to be warm that winter.

The coal furnace consumed wood voraciously. The Woodmaster stove in the kitchen sometimes made that room too hot. The fire in the fireplace was beautiful at night. We closed the glass doors to keep the heat from rushing up and out the chimney. With all the fires burning well, the house was nice and warm, during the cool fall weather and into the winter.

Christmas came. Snow piled up high outside. There was a fire in the fireplace, candles on the low coffee table, and a beautifully decorated tree in the corner by the door. The twins were snuggled up together on the couch with the blanket pulled up around them. The four candles on the angel chimes burned steadily on the mantel piece. The heat from the flames drifted up past the fan blades causing the angels to spin. The soft ding, ding, ding was in the background as we read the story of Jesus’ birth, found in the gospel of Luke. God had blessed us indeed.

The heat from the rekindled fire in the coal furnace was beginning to drift upward through the ducts. The fire in the stove, and the hot oven that had just finished cooking the Swedish Tea Ring made the kitchen warm and welcoming. The fragrance of baking and hot chocolate filled the house.

The joy of sharing gifts with Grandpa and Grandma, and each other, made that first Christmas, in our own house, a time we will never forget. Sledding on the soft, deep, snow down the hill out back, starting near the huge, dead elm tree, was a new experience for our children. None had seen snow for four years. The two youngest never had.

Tending the three fires was a continuous task. Ellen was better than I at checking the Indestructo, keeping the fire going in the cellar. She also kept the Woodmaster fire burning steadily in the kitchen. The wood pile in the garage was half gone by New Year and the coldest months were still coming. When the fire went out in the cellar the house cooled down very quickly on a windy day.

Even though the shortest day of the year had passed, it grew still colder. Maybe March would “come in like a lamb” and just stay that way. It didn’t. There was hope it would “go out like a lamb” since it came in “like a lion”. Still snowing. So much for the brilliance of the groundhog. Why would he ever come out anyway? We began trying to conserve firewood.

For anything that needed to simmer for a long time Ellen opened the Woodmaster stove and cooked on top of the firebox. On Sundays she would set the top oven on our kitchen range, so our Sunday dinner would be hot and ready when we came back from church. There were no timers on that stove, but it did have an electric clock and lights. When we left for Sunday School and church at 9:30, I stoked and damped the fires in the kitchen and cellar.

Everybody fit in our big old Lincoln Continental Mark IV, though the car didn’t fit in our garage. It was a bargain because the transmission leaked and what was once a luxury fabric covering, was coming off the hard top. I replaced the four-barrel carburetor with one her uncle had saved, from his much newer Lincoln, and I had a car we all enjoyed. It’s 460 cubic inch displacement, V8 engine had way more power than it needed. Ellen’s good friend named it “Shasta”, explaining that she always has’ta have more gas and transmission oil.

On the way back from church we were reminded that the wide split front seat had two sets of controls. Tim liked the window and Ellen liked to be beside me. Tim was experimenting with the set of controls on the wide arm rest. She was patient with him, possibly thinking of the roast chicken and rice, that should be ready to pull out of the oven, to serve hot, as soon as we got home.

Entering the kitchen from the garage we were usually greeted by the warm smell of chicken dinner or hot bread, but today something was wrong. I had added too much wood to the early morning fire and it had gone out. The oven hadn’t come on and the kitchen had cooled. Ellen opened the cupboards under the sink to get beans to go with the hotdogs, but had a hard time getting the beans out of the cans. They were frozen. Running hot water over the cans didn’t work either, because the hot water had frozen. It had frozen in the usual place where the pipes were routed through the corner cupboard under the sink. I heated the pipe with a small propane torch and Ellen heated the hot dogs in a fry pan. I needed to do something about insulating the farmhouse.

The wood that had been stacked on one side of the garage was now gone. The snow shovels and the kids’ sleds were there instead. Only a few rows of stacked wood remained in the cellar. The remaining supply was being rapidly consumed in the great coal furnace, the Woodmaster stove and the fireplace. Spring was supposed to be next, but stubborn, snow drifts only settled, slowly.

A big ash tree stood near Weeks Road at the edge of my property. Ellen’s dad brought the Ford and the wood wagon up and together we felled that tree across the road. It was like our own private back road. We immediately began to cut the wood into chunks that would fit into the coal furnace. Ash firewood isn’t the hottest hardwood, but it has very little sap and will burn while still green.
Cutting up that tree, with both our chain saws roaring, we didn’t hear the high-pitched whine, of some other two-cycle engines rapidly approaching. A snow-mobile, suddenly slammed into the branches and trunk of the tree, missing both of us! The two following snowmobiles managed to stop in time. They were using the snow covered back road as their trail.

The tall powerful young man yanked his machine free from the tree. He was angry. His snowmobile was dented. He managed to get it turned around and headed back towards the spring. He soon disappeared into the fog, followed by his friends.

Now what would happen? Getting the rest of the tree cut up and into the wagon to clear the road was our first priority. It wasn’t long before we were called by the police to meet with the young man’s father. It turned out that they lived less than a mile away in the trailer at the corner. I was relieved to find out that Ellen’s dad knew the angry man and did most of the talking for us. The man’s flushed face and lined prominent dark nose supplemented his loud voice as he said things I can’t repeat. I think the policeman knew him well.
It was confirmed that, yes, we were cutting firewood in the road. The tractor and wagon were partly blocking the road. The tree was across the road. We were cutting up the tree with chainsaws for firewood as I needed more to keep my family warm. No, we hadn’t put out any flares or flags. The policeman knew we hadn’t asked his permission to cut the tree.

He confirmed with the young men that they had been riding down Weeks road by the spring. The road was covered in snow. There was some fog by the spring. I’m not sure what the policeman found out about the licenses for the drivers, or the snowmobiles, but he did clarify to them that Weeks Road was not a snowmobile trail and that they were riding on the road illegally.

When we were dismissed, Ellen’s dad reassured me that he didn’t think there would be any further repercussions. We went home and stacked the wagonload of wood in the garage. I went down stairs and added more wood to the roaring fire in the furnace. It began snowing again. I needed more wood!
That huge dead elm tree where the kids had started their sled run was not very far away. If I could cut that down and get it to the house, that might take care of us for another week or two. I could do that. No need to ask for help. Ellen’s dad had already helped me so much.

I climbed the hill through the deep snow and saw that a number of the heavy dead limbs had already fallen. The thick trunk that remained stood straight. It would only fall down-hill if I could cut in deeply enough into the trunk to get it off balance. I began removing blocks, cutting below, above, and behind each, until I could cut out a second row of smaller blocks, to get in past the center. I was working under several tons of elm wood standing far above me. Ellen was watching through the window above her kitchen sink, praying for the tree to fall and to see me, still standing in the snow when it did.

The tree was on the ground when I came home to our warm kitchen for lunch. I had managed with my Homelite chain saw, plunging the tip of its 18-inch bar directly into the trunk to free those blocks. The saw wasn’t equipped with a safety tip or kickback protection, but then, I was young, strong, independent, and confident in myself. Felling the tree was a real accomplishment. I had begun cutting it into short pieces before lunch.

The Ford tractor could never get up that hill through the deep snow, so the kids and I headed up the hill to begin to bring the firewood back down in plastic sleds to our garage. While it was possible, it was hard work, and would take a long time for sure. None of my kids complained, maybe they even liked the challenge, but we could be at this for days. Their dad hated to ask for help, but, maybe we just couldn’t do it by ourselves.
I never found out how a man from church, Dick Craft, discovered what I was trying to accomplish, but when he drove in with his powerful Oliver tractor we stopped using the sleds and watched the tractor in amazement. He was pulling a long empty spreader, that had been converted into a wood wagon. It certainly looked like the hill would be no problem, but the deep lugs soon churned helplessly in the grainy, partially melted, accumulated layers of snow. The ground beneath was hard, still frozen. The heavy green and white tractor even slipped a little sideways when he was backing up to return empty down the hill. He headed back to his farm a few miles away.

When he returned the next time, he backed the fully loaded wood wagon up my driveway to the garage. I helped him unloaded dry, seasoned, firewood that had no doubt come from his personal supply.
Spring finally came.

There was still some of the fire-wood from Dick Craft in the garage. The wood near the stump of the elm tree was drying out in the sunshine, but it was no longer an urgency to get it down the hill. God had given us help to get us through the winter.

Are we so self-confident that we refuse to admit our need for help? We like to be independent. We ask God for help, but don’t admit our need to anybody else. Is it hard to accept help from the people he sends? He sent us a farmer, his Oliver tractor, and his wagon load of wood to keep us warm that winter.