For many years we’ve got our friend Thomas to bring us a load of firewood. He does right-away clearing as well as other tree cutting so he always has some on hand. Matt gets him to bring rounds of logs that have been cut into firewood length but still need to be split for heater wood.
Typically we have him bring the load in the fall of the year, but this year we had more wood on hand than usual because of the trees Matt cut along the big garden.
A few weeks back we finally got him to bring a dump truck load. We’ve always had him dump it exactly where our new shed is sitting.
Matt studied on an alternate place to dump it, but finally decided the only good place was the big garden.
So that’s where the pile of wood is sitting. Matt has been splitting it as fast as he can. Two truck loads have already been added to our basement supply.
Last week Matt built a floor in one corner of the shed. He’s planning to fill it with firewood.
He’s also started work on the big oak that fell on our garden last summer. He’s cleared the creek, but the main portion of the trunk still needs to be pulled across the creek and cut up. That tree will provide a lot of firewood.
chunk
B verb
1 (also chunk up) To stoke or stir (a fire), feed with wood.
1939 Hall Coll. Cataloochee NC My brother, he was chunking the fire that day, blowed the cap off it. (Jim Sutton) 1941 Justus Kettle Creek 167 Matt got up to chunk the fire. c1945 Haun Hawk’s Done 249 I chunked up the fire and put another piece of wood on. 1963 Edwards Gravel 92 If you ain’t, I’ll chunk up the far a bit and we’ll roast a tater here in the ashes and eat it before we go to be, uh? 1989 Hannah Reflections 4 The boys chunked up the fire to thaw out his feet.
2 To throw, toss.
1974 Fink Bits Mt Speech 4 Chunk me the ball. 1992 David Jack Tales 74 All night long there would be old boys whistling from the yard, chunking little rocks on top of the house, even peeking in the windows, trying to get that girl to come out of the house so they could court her for a little while.
—Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English
It’s still common to hear people in our area of Appalachia talk of chunking up the fire as well as chunking another log in the stove.
Another way you’ll hear chunk used is to describe a chubby baby.
On cold winter days I’m glad I have Matt to chunk up the fire. He loves to throw another chunk of wood in the stove and watch the sparks fly. If you were to see his baby pictures you’d agree he was a chunk of a boy.
Last night’s video: Funeral Food in Appalachia | Cheese Potatoes, Chess Cake & Green Beans.
Tipper
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Hi,
I grew up with a Fisher Wood stove. We had one in our old house and loved it. Now we have a Petit Godin Stove that burns wood and coal. It was made in France and has a small mica window on the front door so we can watch the fire. The stove opens from the top so one has to be careful not to smoke up the house when filling it up or chunking up the fire at night. This stove is small so big chunks of wood have a tight fit in it but really last a long time. What would we do without our wood or coal burning stoves?
There is nothing any warmer than a wood stove when the weather is cold.
Take care,
Kathy Patterson
Tipper I’ve been having trouble getting your daily post. I miss it
Thanks-Sue
Matt needs a helper!
As always praying for Granny.
Sometimes folks will add, ” He’s a LITTLE chunk.” Which is two opposite things, but it’s understandable when speaking of a baby. Show us Matt when he was a little chunk, plz.
When I was a kid playing baseball or football we would say chunk or chuck me the ball. I grew up in the suburbs and no one heated with fire and never heard chunk or chuck used in that context. I never understood why we said chunk or chuck me the ball until I read your post today. Thanks for the clarification!
Having a wood burning stove is the one thing I miss having in my home. We had a Buck Stove in our home in WV and I loved it. We have gas log fireplace in our current home, however this year we are not using it. It’s just not the same as a wood burning stove.
My husband grew up on a farm with only wood heat, there was no electricity. He helped his dad from a very young age with cutting, chopping and stacking wood for our long cold winters. Once we had our own home that was the first thing he put in the house was a wood stove. Thankfully, we have 40 acres of trees available to us. There’s always trees that have fallen in the winter due to high winds, he brings those to the yard and cuts and stacks them. There’s nothing better than heat from a wood stove. We’ve never heard the work chunking, but we both do that everyday. My son was a little chunky when he was born 50 years ago!
Turning cold again tomorrow, so we will have our woodstove fired up all weekend. I look forward to curling up close to it with a good book!
Aahh..the assorted tasks of getting a supply of wood for colder months. I remember those days well. Though daddy had the greatest portion in the getting, I did my fair share of rolling the big chunks and the splitting and stacking, then filling the wood box indoors as needed. Then I had my own wood stove after marriage. Chunks & chunky were common names that were applied to both wood and babies or anyone a little ‘chunky.’ 😉 I also remember Ed Ammons mention of the poem of the woodchuck chucking wood! I still enjoy the smell of freshly cut wood, the warmth and the sounds as it burns in a fireplace, stove or campfire, but happy to have the ease of our modern-day options. As for woodsheds – daddy also built one such as Matt did, only in the summer months when it had less wood, when relatives came to visit, he made shelves and all us cousins slept in there on the shelves.
We say “Chuck” the wood and do use chunk or chunky to describe a chubby baby. 🙂 We have a woodstove for the last 5 yrs since moving very rurally and I just love it! This is the first year we are using wood from our property (dead oaks we harvested) and it’s so rewarding. Nothing like the heat of a wood fire. 🙂 Have a blessed day!
OK, talking “chunks”, I just gotta repeat that old country saying, “I ain’t seen you since who flung the chunk!” And now you have me wondering where “Chuckey, TN” got its name. Probably one of those post office name things and has no relation to “chunk”. I think maybe part of the idea of a chunk is that it is unexpectedly heavy for its size. (A good thing for a long-lasting fire.) That idea of “hefty” tracks through into some of its other uses. Except “Chunk the fire” also refers to breaking up charred pieces so the air can reach the wood better, often followed up with throwing on another “chunk” or two. As to how firewooding changes over the years, … we have to adjust downward and/or backwards over time. It isn’t any fun but it has to be. I see in myself that the things I think I can do and the things I ought to be trying don’t always match. My wife tells me that all the time. All I can say is, us guys have to work at having and keeping our self respect. Taking some risk is part of it. We aren’t given to ‘playing it safe’. There are some folks on here who understand very well what I’m saying.
My grandson was laid off from his job about the time a power company cut a right-of -way through my property. He and a buddy saw all the fallen trees and decided to get rich quick by cutting and delivering firewood. It only took a few truckloads for them to realize how many times they handled each piece of wood they delivered. Neither of the guys has a lazy bone in their body, but they agreed that there had to be a better way to make a dollar. That reminds me of the joke about a country boy who applied for a job and mentioned that his previous employment was a pile-it. His daddy cut the wood, and he pile it in the truck. He didn’t know why everyone was asking questions about airplanes. (I am not a good joke teller. It was funny when I heard it.)
Morning Tipper and Matt! Hope you have a relaxing day today. In SW Ohio it’s supposed to be raining and snowing today. Going to be messy for sure! Blessings
I enjoyed reading everyone’s stories. Watching Matt build his wood closet reminded me of my dad and how, he, like Matt, could build anything.
My dad never finished high school because he had to help his family due to the depression. He was in the CCC as well as fighting in the Philippines during WW2. He was a farm hand and a carpenter.
He then, after having seven kids, he became a journeyman at a division of GM. He was a tool cutter which meant he had to calculate the cutter using a slide rule.
I say all this to say that Matt is man’s man like my father! I think you have a keeper Tipper.
Linda, reading about your Daddy makes me want to brag about my Daddy. Being the oldest boy in his family, he quit school in the 8th grade to work and help his sharecropper Daddy. Despite this he was very common sense smart and had the talent to do many things. I know of someone that only had a 3rd grade education, but was a successful farmer, logger and owner of a sawmill, again just plain common sense. In today’s world, I think in today’s world there is a shortage of common “horse” sense. No one has came up with an apt for it!
There another word “chuck” that was more often used when I was growing up. “Chunking” was rearranging the far so that it could breathe better and to make room for more wood. Chucking was the act of throwing something. “Chuck me that piece of pipe up here.” or “chuck some more wood in that truck, that’s not even half a load.
I realized these words interchange and overlap so I went to the Dictionary of Southern Appalachian for their definition. Guess what! The word’s not even there. I was disappointed to say the least. I was expecting for the book to call it a variation or something but no, it’s not there at all.
Either my people are incredibly stupid and centuries behind the rest of the world or were chosen for eradication. They took our land and scattered us all over the country and now they are erasing our dialect.
Remember?
“How much wood,
would a woodchuck chuck
if a woodchuck could chuck wood?”
A children’s poem written in 1902 by Robert Hobart Davis. Shame on you Robert, now it’s 120+ years later and we are going to have to rewrite all your mistakes.
Although firewood is good, I’m not going to use it. When I moved out of the city, I was so naive I didn’t know there are a LOT of folks who burn wood in the country. Not a one appears to have a chimney cap or chimney sweep. I’ve been through 2 fires outdoors here in this community in 3 1/2 months and I’m admittedly nervous. I hate to smell it and see the smoke laying all about. I’m keeping the Grandpappy Bear Fisher stove that was here, but I hope to never use it. Did I mention the old lady I purchased this house from had a chimney fire due to not cleaning it before I moved here? Y’all can call me Lady “Hank Hill” cause I believe in propane or natural gas… I stacked wood before and it’s hard. I don’t want to think about cutting a tree down, then cutting it up and splitting it and moving it and stacking it. “Lord have mercy, I’m “tort” a’ ready!!! All this wood talk.” Yall have the wood-I’m trying to cut down in that area. I don’t even like seeing a poor tree cut down or blown down. Btw, yall ORTA see my fireplace painted inside and out. It’s pretty and I put a light in it… no more fires, God willing… To EACH HIS OWN AND PEACE BROTHERS AND SISTERS AND WELL WISHES TO ALL!!!
I helped my Daddy cut his firewood for many years from the time I was big enough and then cut it for ten years by myself after his heart attack. His heart doctor told him to do whatever you want to do, you can tell what hurts you, but under no circumstances do I want you using a chainsaw or weed eater because of the vibration. You do a lot of “chunking” when you cut the tree down, cut it into fire wood stick length, then split and load it, unload and stack it at the house, before finally bringing it inside and chunking it in the stove. Shoot I would have thought it was hog Heaven to have someone bring a load of cut up chunks to us and all I had to do was split and stack it. I didn’t write that to throw off on Tipper and Matt, it would just save a lot of work. Debbie mentioned a Fisher papa bear stove, Daddy had a Fisher mama bear stove for the last few years of his life.
Randy, I haven’t heard or thought about your phrase “throw off on” in many a year. It was common in our family’s speech, same as Tipper’s “right-away.” As for cutting a log, or round, into proper lengths before splitting, we called that blocking. Cured hardwood burns the same whatever we call it. When Matt gets to be an old man, he’ll need to invest in a Bobcat with a hydraulic wood splitter. I saw a man and his wife and their Bobca go through a pile of oak blocks like a dose of salts through a widow woman, as my daddy used to say with a grin.
Gene, I will be 72 if I make it to Feb 20th. Between arthritis, bad disc in my back and just plain out old age I am now paying for many things I used to do with giving it a thought in my younger days. Cutting firewood and picking up those heavy blocks and loading them on a trailer without first splitting them, cutting pine pulpwood wood into 5 ft lengths and then hand loading them across the frame behind the cab of an old pulpwood truck along with so many other things. I worked 38 years at Michelin and would hand load 20,000 pounds of rubber on to a waist high conveyor belt in an 8 hr. shift. I would like to go back just 20 years, even though I was beginning to have problems at 50 years old, I would ignore them and still pretty much do anything I wanted to do, but that was yesterday and yesterday is gone.
Good morning Tipper, Matt and Acorns. TY for last nights video. As far as chunk goes I always considered the word a noun or chunky as an adjective. I always used the word chuck as a verb or noun. TY for the chunk verb usages. I keep everyone here and up Wilson Hollow in my prayers. I love y’all.
I always say chuck, not chunk. Interesting how the words change through out time and family.
For about five years I had the pleasure of cutting down trees on my father-in-law’s land to use ad fire wood. I did it out of necessity because our old farm house had an oil heater and the second winter we were in that house the price of heating oil went from 25 cents per gallon to over $1.25. Since the farm house came with an old Glenwood kitchen stove we started using wood to heat the house. We added a separate wood burning stove in the living room for more heat. It was hard wood but it got us through some very tough winters. Matt is a hard working man because anyone who has cut, hauled, split, and stacked wood knows it isn’t easy. The boys would have to chuck the wood in from outside into the barn and from the barn to the stoves. They did a lot of chucking. Have a blessed day. Diane and I continue to pray for Granny.
Ron, you mentioned pleasure, in my comment I mentioned all the work, but when my saw chain was sharp, and saw running good, I enjoyed cutting the wood. I learned to come to the house and go back another day if things were not going good. I still enjoy cutting grass. From some of your comments I think some things in our past lives would be similar.
My papaw loved to watch the fire in his wood burning heater. He would tell us he had to throw a chunk of wood in the heater and stoke the fire. He always had a pan of peanuts on top of his wood heater.
he was chunking the fire that day,blowed the cap off it! that makes me think of a moonshine still, God bless you friends have a great day,
I thought the same thing!
I love the warmth of our stove. We’ve had our stove a long time. It’s a rare Fisher Coal Bear stove. It’s been a good one. We use to use a piece of coal at night, but you can’t get coal around here anymore. We used to cut, haul, and split so much wood but since we are getting older we now have the Amish deliver it to us and it’s in chunks from the sawmill. Our son in law works for them so it’s very helpful. If you have good, strong backs be grateful. My honey of 41 years has had two back surgeries and my crooked back is deteriorating so cutting and hauling wood has been changed to someone delivering it. It’s good to see Matt can still do it so well.
Speaking of chunks, our youngest grandson is certainly a chunky monkey. He is 10 months old and weighs 31 lbs. Our five year old granddaughter, his sister, weighs 36 lbs. He’s definitely a chunk! We will be getting a new grandson in late March and we’re so excited!
My son weighed 22 lbs. at 5 months.
Ed, now that’s a chunk!!