There’s an old country song by Luke Bryan. It hails from the era of Taylor Swift breaking country music, and carries the fun storytelling that Nashville twanged before pop took over.
2023 and 2024 were dry. I wrote about it “Wherefore Art Thou Raineo” and because we lived through it, it stands out as a bad time. Grass wasn’t growing, so we had to feed hay as early as July. Hay costs escalate because the grass isn’t growing. Shipping in from out of state works, and costs only money. Much better then the old days without trucks and highways when you had to put cattle down if the grass was short.
Compounding the issue for ranchers was shortfalls of rain in other areas. Hay prices were not just high in North Texas, they were high across much of the cattle country in the USA. Ranchers responded by selling head into the meat market and sacrificing future calving production capabilities. The size of the national herd is quiet undercurrent of our national wealth diminishing in real terms, in real time, separate from the impacts of inflation on purchasing power, and it has accelerated downhill following COVID:
While the mean rainfall in Parker is 33inches a year, the decade after the 2011 drought were ‘bumper crop’ years of rainfall. For ten years trees could thrust every higher and ever wider, an explosive growth period. That all crashed back down in 2023 and 2024.
How do trees respond? They’ve become over extended, stretched beyond their means, living the good life of the roaring twenties on cheap credit and an aversion to future risk management. It’s the boom and it’s the bust, and the bust means the wind breaks off limbs.
We’re talking big limbs, the kind I can’t get my arms all the way around, and they crashed down all over the Raising Wood homestead throughout 2025. For a sense of perspective, in 18 months I wore out a Stihl chainsaw cutting down limbs and dead trees.
Good! Now we can put firewood up for sale at the end of the drive. Laid down some landscaping fabric, found some firewood racks on the clearance area at Lowe’s, picked up some stencils and poly board and Hobby Lobby, and boom, we’re in business as Raising Wood Firewood.
For our family purposes, the revenue is not the primary goal. We’ve made enough back to cover those expenses listed above. What is wonderful is a combined family project, and a tangible leveraging of lemons into lemonade. It would be much easier to grumble about breaking trees and leave them to rot on the ground for 5-10 years. It is much more fun to convert them to firewood. They are the right size that every child can help with moving, stacking, and racking them. We can all delight together when someone venmo’s $6 to Jenny for 24 pieces of wood they quietly picked up from the rack.
You also have plenty of wood to camp with. We joined a church group for a camping trip at the end of October and provided the firewood for seven families, which is cultivating the joy of generosity for each of us.
Speaking of camping, the boys have taken to it with great zest:
And speaking of down logs and chopped trees, finding a beaver dam was a fun time:
And speaking of a fun time, how about a David vs Goliath cast iron cookoff?
And speaking of a cast iron skillet, guess who is having the most fun cooking?
Life is good and we are blessed. Lemonade from Lemons is antifragile.
On the topic of drought, lemons into lemonade, and woody growths: Mesquite trees have an inverse relationship with dry years. Everything else withers, and the prickly mesquites grow stronger. Helps keep the soil active and fights erosion, which is nice. Stabs tires and hands, which is not. However, I have two strong boys with saws who were delighted to be paid 25 cents per stripling they cut down for the burn pile.
They each made some good money, learning some responsibility and task management along the way. Then we roasted marshmallows over the coals, because nothing tastes better then thorns turned into ash.
Small decisions steadily made become habits, and habits become character. Much of what we do at Raising Wood involves this habit forming, character creating process. So i noticed one morning a visual example of that development.
Our firewood rack for home use is stacked up against the fence at the top of the yard. It runs over a hundred feet and has fruit trees between the fire pit and the firewood stack. Over time, the result is that the wood behind the fruit trees remains high and untouched, while the wood that is a straight line walk from the firepit to the wood rack is readily consumed.
Finding these blind spots is an opportunity for improvement and refinement, both in our physical space and our own personal character. Making lemons into lemonade, one day at a time.
