I don’t have many sayings in my head, but one of them is that May is October in my head. The beginning of Spring on a farm is inextricably linked to the beginning of winter just months away.

I always tell myself, “winter is almost here, get moving.”

As the official Quartermaster of Bedlam Farm, one of my tasks is ordering farm stuff, I’m good on the phone, have developed a list of honest and hard-working helpers – Jay Bridge, Matt Ross the farrier, Greg  Burch, Ray Telford the handyman.

I look forward to seeing all of them, they do wonderful work and are great fun to know and talk to. I am proud to work with them.

I learned the hard way at the first Bedlam Farm that if you don’t start getting read for winter long before October, you are really deep in the well. I’ve put in my orders, gotten on the lists for firewood for our stoves and hay for the barn.

You don’t want to be too far down those lists come the first freeze, the prices to way up and the list gets much longer. I am very fond of our logger, Greg Burch, I called him last week to ask for seven cords and today, he showed up with two full cords – $360.

We have two wood stoves in our house, our heating oil for the entire winter was about $500, $400 in the last few weeks since we stopped lighting the fires round the clock.

Greg delivers fine, seasoned wood and we leave it out in the sun for a while. Maria wants to stack all of it herself (I can help) but by August, we might ask our pal Nicole to come over and  help finish it up. Seven cords is a woodshed full of wood.

Usually we get one cord at a time, but Greg has a new truck (he is the inspiration for my getting Gus and Bud, but more about that later.)

I stood in the wood shed and gulped a bit as this river of wood came pouring down out of his bigger truck. His 16-year-old Pug JD was in the cab, as usual. We shook hands and caught up (he was in Florida a lot this winter).

There is a lot of stacking to do. Greg says just let him know when he needs to bring more wood, so we need to keep up. Five more cords to go, which is about three or four truckloads. The hay is coming in June, no rush.

We talked dogs and wood and life in the country. Here we go, I said, this is one of the ways I mark life, you cannot have a farm and live in the country by yourself, the quickest way to perish is to try to go it alone.