Enter the woodshed

I feel like I reference stuff in the past an awful lot. Oh well, here we go again. You might remember some years ago (2013, blimy!) when I built the Mk2 wood rack or the second Mk2 wood rack.

Both of those are still in place at camp and doing their job well. The old Mk1 wood rack at the house got replaced with a Mk2 and that has also worked out well. However at home we store a lot more wood than at camp, I've had as much as 5 cords (640 cubic feet) of wood at one time. For the most part that wood has lived under various tarps and pieces of plywood or whatnot. That has worked with varying degrees of success but we really needed a woodshed.

I knew this was going to be a big job so I kept putting it off, finally I decided it was time.

A trip to Home Depot resulted in $400 of wood, screws, roofing and etcetera. Here we've got the 2 uprights, they're actually stacked in the picture. The one on top is 6 feet tall, the other is 8 which gives just over a 3:12 pitch to the roof.

Ben and his wife Rebecca came over and helped stand everything up, it was great to have a bunch of hands for that job. Here I've just test fit the first rafter.

Now with all the rafters on.

If you're a real carpenter you'll notice that I didn't think to put purlins on before putting on the roofing. I'm debating if I should go back and do it. I don't want to because it's a hassle since the whole roof has to come back off. It might be a little easier with the shed filled, I'll be able to stand on the firewood...

Starting on the "walls". I'm not going to fill in the walls, the shed doesn't need it and the open walls will hopefully help the firewood to dry.

First attempt at loading. We've debated a lot and which way the wood should go in. The open side of the shed faces north so this is an east/west loading. I've since decided that I prefer the wood to go north/south. This "short way" loading allows me to put dry wood on once side of the shed and wet on the other.

The shed is 7x12, the roof is actually 8 feet so we get a 6" overhang front and back to keep things dry. The front is 8 feet tall, the rear is 6 so average that to 7. So far I've loaded it 6 feet high, 7*12*6=504 or just about 4 cords of wood.

I bought enough wood to put a front on it too. If I fill in the left side I can load in that extra space at the top, as it is the wood wants to spill out the front if I load too high. I suppose I could use some straps to hold the front, that might be worth an experiment...

Wood rack part: many

If you've read back through the archives you'll realized I'm somewhat obsessed with storing firewood. The original mk1 firewood rack at camp had about had it so it was time...

This is actually two mk2 mod2 firewood racks. While the rack at home hadn't rotted out it didn't have a top so my wood would end up wet. Its almost just as easy to cut out two firewood racks at once as it is to cut one. You can see on the right where I started assembling one, thats actually a mistake, the block should go inside the long 2x4s, the way its built in the picture the uprights will be too close together...

The mod2 version features a less steep roof pitch which should result in better wood coverage, its one piece for the uprights and of course the 4x4 blocks underneath. Everything except the roof is pressure treated.

The original mk2 model had a plywood roof with metal roofing over it, this one just has the metal roofing but has twice as many stringers (as in I put them on proper 16" centers this time) to make it strong.

It sits on the same site as the original mk1 and while it doesn't hold quite as much wood it will keep the wood it has much drier and cleaner.

Since cold weather has arrived in central MA I've been using up the wood in the mk1 wood rack at my house in preparation for installing the second mk2 mod2 there, I still need to source the metal roofing. One of the design specs in this one is to make it work with a single sheet of roofing and fortunately I'd thought to bring my angle grinder to camp to cut the roofing. This also ensures we have good overhangs front and back, the roof structure is 27"x48", the metal roofing is 32"x52", that will make sure the wood is covered and the roof structure itself is protected.

The next structure I need to work on at camp is the shower house. When I originally built it I didn't think about roof overhang so the rear wall never really dries out. Thats awful hard on the OSB sheathing. My solution is to put metal roofing over the existing asphalt shingles. That roof is 48"x79" so I want more like 54"x83" for the roof. Metal roofing comes in 36"x96" sheets so I think I can make it with just two sheets. We've got some scraps from the camp roof if I make a mistake...

On cooking

In previous posts about my crazy homesteading idea I talked about having fuel to get me through and also providing for water. Cooking of course requires both.
I figure I'll start my time with a normal load of groceries. Seems like a smart settler would bring groceries along. That'll probably last a week. After that it'll be mostly beans and rice.
Why beans and rice? Outside of the US beans and rice is a major staple food, it keeps well, is easy to cook and is shelf stable. Keep the animals, air and moisture out and it'll keep a good long time.

I'll also do some foraging which will at least provide counterpoint to my rice and beans. Won't probably be enough to survive on though. A priority will be to get a garden growing. Things like spinach grow quickly and again will provide variety. Longer term squashes are very easy to grow and provide heavily. I'm told tomatoes are difficult but I've never had any problem. New England is a very forgiving climate for gardening and I intend to take advantage of that.

There are many sources of pot meat that folks in the north don't tend to think of and the big one on our farm is the groundhog. Also known as a woodchuck we're talking here about marmota monax. Since our farm hasn't been actively worked for nearly a decade at this point our fields are frequented by the fat critters. A .22 rifle makes short work of one and once I start gardening removing them as pests will be a requirement. There is no fixed season on groundhogs so this is all totally legal. Also legal year round are squirrels, unfortunately northern Maine isn't home to big fat squirrels like the grey and fox squirrels you see down south, we only get the little reds. Still if all you'd been eating was rice and beans I suspect a little squirrel meat would be welcome.

The biggest problem will be a shortage of fuel. If I limit myself to the initial fuel load I will certainly at some point be forced to burn wood to cook with. Early on while the weather is cold I could cook on the woodstove in the cabin. However warmer weather will certainly make that impractical. Back in the old days they had summer kitchens, a kitchen outside to keep the heat out of the house. I like this and ideally I'll source another small boxwood stove like we have in the camp to provide for such. I could extend the roof off of the shower house and with a good brick floor it would be pleasant. Otherwise I'd need to build a firepit and tripod. I could cook in a dutch oven over the open fire. For things like basic rice and beans this wouldn't be too bad. Still it'd be a world of dirty pots and smokey fires.

Fuel for wood fires is plentiful. No real timber harvesting has been done on our land in more than 50 years. We're mostly grown in with spruce and poplar. The latter is actually quaking aspen and not poplar proper. Both make decent fire wood although generally referred to as "gopher wood" in that as soon as you load the stove you need to go-fer wood because it burns up so quickly. Considering the relatively small amounts of wood needed for cooking I would start by thinning the trees around the camp, our woods are badly grown in with inter-meshing branches that stunt growth and cut down on animal traffic. Historically these dead low branches are called squaw wood and clearing them out is good for the forest, it lets the trees get bigger and keeps forest fires at bay. I presume over 6 months or so I'd get to the point where I'd have to start foraging fairly far from the camp which is good news. Very long term there would be a need to actually cut some trees for wood. The rule of thumb is usually that you can cut a cord of wood per acre per year without damaging the land. We've got probably 10 or more acres in trees so I basically can't ever cut too many trees as long as I spread my cutting around...