FORT KENT, Maine — It is said that time and tides wait for no man. I would like to amend that to time, tides and northern Maine winters.
Don’t ask me how it happened, but somehow, here we are again: The annual kickoff to football, first days of school, pumpkin-spice everything and, on Rusty Metal Farm, the full-scale firewood panic.
Up here in the far northern reaches of the state, the leaves have started to turn, I have seen a disturbing number of migratory birds packing up to head south and even the Rusty Metal Chickens have reduced their egg output thanks to the steadily decreasing sunlight of the shortening days.
If all that were not enough to have me pacing the floor of my very empty wood room, consider the long range winter predictions of the Maine-based Farmer’s Almanac, released last week.
“The theme here has been, ‘Say it isn’t snow,’” Peter Geiger, editor of the almanac, said last week from his Lewiston office. “But we are going to see unseasonable cold [temperatures] and plenty of snow.”
Excuse me while I start piling on the extra layers of clothes now and take a quick inventory of my snow shovels.
According to Geiger’s annual publication, which employs a forecasting methodology dating back to the 1800s using solar activity, lunar phases and mathematical formulas, the coming winter in our region will be a near carbon copy of last year.
“It’s going to be deja vu,” Geiger said. “We may see our first snow in mid-December and our biggest storms will be the first part of January and in February and it will be bitterly cold.”
For those of you who don’t remember — or have simply blocked it from memory — last winter in Maine broke snowfall and low temperature records on several occasions.
Down East and southern Maine bore the worst of it with places like Eastport and Portland getting hit by snowstorms measured in feet on several occasions.
By March of this past year, Portland had recorded 91 inches of snow, well above the average seasonal record of 52.7 inches. In Bangor, meanwhile, 128.6 inches of snow had fallen by March, more than double the seasonal average of 56.5 inches.
Geiger is not alone in calling for another old fashioned Maine winter.
Last month the Old Farmer’s Almanac, published in New Hampshire, predicted this coming winter will be colder than normal in New England, with the snowiest periods coming in mid- to late November, late December and early to mid-March.
These are similar to conditions the publication predicted last year for New England, right down to the snowiest periods but likely not as extreme.
According to Geiger, who says his publication averages an 80 percent accuracy rate, the coming winter should ease up on Maine by mid-March, unlike last year which seemed to last well into May.
“Normally, when I call for snow people are high-fiving me and are really excited,” he said. “But with the last two or three long winters, I get people telling me ‘We don’t want to think about it.’”
Like it or not, if one heats with wood, one has to think about winter.
It’s not that the wood is not there. I live on a rather large woodlot, after all. And, as has been tradition the last several years, my amazing neighbor and logger Andrew last fall cut, limbed and yarded all the wood I’d need for this season.
As I type, there is a lovely and very tidy pile of tree-length wood situated on a rise behind the house, not more than 500 feet from where I am sitting.
In fact, the location is such that if the trees are cut into stove-length chunks, I could probably roll them down that hill and into the wood room with proper aim, force and trajectory.
Heating with wood means you can never have too many friends. So, my friend Bob will be coming over starting this week to begin the process of transforming that pile of trees into a pile of firewood.
For a couple of seasons I tried my best to help in this process.
Donning my safety gear of padded chaps, steel-toed boots, helmet and ear protection — and looking very much like a cross between Darth Vader and Clint Eastwood — I grabbed my chainsaw and attacked the trees amid much oily smoke, sawdust and excitement.
About the 10th time Bob had to stop what he was doing and help me unjam that saw from where it had bound up in a log, he very diplomatically let me know: A), having me at the woodpile was helpful; and B), it would be even more helpful if I put the saw down and devoted myself to loading wood into the trailer to be driven to the house.
Which means, during my upcoming week of vacation, I’ll be making multiple roundtrips from the woodlot to the house loading, tossing and stacking about eight cords of wood.
Once down at the house, the firewood will remain in a pile outside where the air can get to it for one last period of drying before it is tossed into the cellar for the final stacking.
The same thing is happening in countless woodlots and basements around the state as we all engage in the pre-winter firewood dance, and I’d be lying if I said there was not a part of me that looked forward to it every year.
At least, that’s what I tell myself to quell the rising panic every time I pass the empty wood room.
Julia Bayly of Fort Kent is an award winning writer and photographer, who writes part time for Bangor Daily News. Her column appears here every other Friday. She can be reached by e-mail at jbayly@bangordailynews.com.
