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Would you rather spend all morning weeding the garden or chopping/stacking wood?

Matt McSpadden

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posted 9 months ago

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If you like the "Would You Rather" game, check out this index of other questions. https://permies.com/t/238000/Permaculture-Edition

Would you rather spend all morning weeding the garden or chopping/stacking wood?

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Matt McSpadden

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As much as I like a neat garden, I'm going with chopping stacking wood, as I have a lot of good memories on work days doing wood as a group.

Christopher Weeks

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I injured my back a couple weeks ago and it's not healing as quickly as I'd like. I think the chopping/stacking would be easier to deal with than hours of stooping, and probably therapeutic -- more variety and big whole-body motions.

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Timothy Norton

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There is something rhythmically pleasing with splitting wood. Once I get into the swing of it, it is almost a fun activity. I'm team splitting wood.

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Nancy Reading

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I tend to weed when I've got something more exciting planned: like planting out new plants, or doing some sowing. I rarely weed for the sake of tidiness (!), sometimes if my other plants look like they don't stand a chance against the docken perhaps. I'm trying to do more chop and drop though.
I do have wood to cut to length and stack (the fact it is cut coppice means no splitting :) ) but it's not urgent.
If as 'weeding' digging a new minihugel bed is allowed, then I'll go for weeding, but I suspect in the spirit of this question we're looking for more garden maintenance, so since I don't really have lots of plants to put out just yet, I think I'd better get on with the wood stacking. I actually managed to get quite a bit cut this week. It's amazing how big a section my loppers will cut through when the wood is green. (Don't overstrain them, says my husband!)

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John F Dean

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posted 9 months ago

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Chopping wood has always been therapeutic for me. Chopping it is.

At my age, Happy Hour is a nap.

Anne Miller

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I have never chopped wood. I don't think I would be good at doing that.

I just came in from pulling a few weeds.

I don't mind pulling weeds so I will go with the fact that I would rather spend all morning pulling weeds.

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Tereza Okava

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Matt McSpadden wrote:As much as I like a neat garden, I'm going with chopping stacking wood, as I have a lot of good memories on work days doing wood as a group.

I don't even cut or stack wood any more, but this is what I was going to say!!
I grew up chopping/splitting stacking
worked in a camp with lots of chopping
did it as an adult later
there will always be more weeding tomorrow..... i'm chopping and stacking!

George Booth

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Hmm. As with any question it's a bit more complex. Ask me 6 years ago before I started stretching daily and it would have been wood chopping over weeding 100%. Ask 3 years ago and it would be weeding as it was kind of fun being in different positions that would have caused so much strain and discomfort years prior. Ask me now after I started growing stuff for myself and I'd say there's no point in splitting wood if you have the right fire place to make into bio char (we don't burn wood for heat in Hawaii), and there's no point to weeding if there's no available mulch to cover the grounds so I'd rather chop and drop the weeds as living mulch than pull them out (free wood chips are hard to come by here and I prefer minimum cost growing). Leaving soil bare and naked to the sun is not great for the soil health so when I think back on weeding around a plant only to leave bare soil with hundreds of more weed seeds ready to go I cringe a bit.

C. Letellier

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Both make my back hurt. But I would almost certainly choose wood if the gardening is at ground level. If it is proper raised beds I can sit on or beside then weeding.

Country oriented nerd with primary interests in alternate energy in particular solar. Dabble in gardening, trees, cob, soil building and a host of others.

Dan Fish

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Me big hairy man. Chop wood. No sissy garden. Hahahha

Really though, weeding always hurts my lil back. Firewood is fine but its the bend AND reach of weeding that always gets me.

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Marty Mac

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Both;)
Split and stack for a while, take a break and walk the gardens to pull a few weeds. Rinse and repeat.

Carla Burke

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Both things can be therapeutic, for me, so if the gardens are not in 18 - 24" raised beds, then chopping & stacking wood. Both hurt my back, but getting up and down off the ground kills the rest of me, too. But, if the beds are nicely raised, I'll take weeding, because for me, 'weeding' is synonymous with 'harvesting', so the seeds become dinner.

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Nancy Reading

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Getting somewhere now...

cutting-and-stacking.jpg

cutting to length and stacking coppiced wood to dry

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Maieshe Ljin

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I’m likely to spend a morning weeding—or more accurately, weed-gathering. I can bring everything back and make greens soup. Whereas every time I am cutting wood, I tire myself with the sawing and cutting, not to mention carrying it from here to there. I think I find weeding much more pleasant.

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Helen Siddall-Butchers

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I'd rather sit and drink coffee all morning, admiring the local (usually edible) volunteer plants grow in the garden, and occasionally buying in a truck load of wood, already prepared, from a local supplier, which is helping the local community economy 😂

Scott Weinberg

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Location: North East Iowa, USA

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I cut a lot of wood, but I do not cut wood, and stack in the woods, then unstack in the woods and take to the farm house and split and stack in a shed, And then unstack from the shed and haul to wood burner and stack it up there. And then unstack to burn.

Having the ability to move totes around lets me cut in the woods, split into totes and burn from totes. Bing-bang-burn. Saves a lot of time to do other things.

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Stephen B. Thomas

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I prefer splitting wood in the mornings, gardening in the afternoon. Although I absolutely love using the X-27 and want to be buried with it when I die, in my experience gardening ends the day on a lighter note so I typically save that for the afternoons.

"We carry a new world here, in our hearts..."

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K Kaba

pollinator

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Location: MD, USA. zone 7

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It depends on the weather. I don't sweat properly, so I'm always trying to manage overheating.

If it's warm, I'd much rather weed. I can usually keep big movements to a minimum, linger in shade, and take little breaks in ways that wouldn't frustrate people I'm working with.

If it's chilly, chopping and stacking keep me warm. I actually like shoveling snow! If I start to get overheated I can just take a layer or three off until I'm out there in my tank top shoveling away.

Lif Strand

pollinator

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Location: New Mexico USA zone 6

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As one of the lucky ones who lives exactly where I want to be, I am additionally fortunate to be living how I want to live. And that means any chores on my isolated high-altitude NM property get done in my time and manner rather than other people's. It also means I don't have a whole morning to spend weeding or chopping.

Some would call it lazy, others would call it sanity. I say to live the good life is to live the life that makes a person happy. People will argue it, but I say if you aren't happy, you've missed the whole point of being born with a brain capable of experiencing joy.

What this means is that If I'm going to weed, I'll do it as needed or wanted (by plants or by me). I do it for exactly as long as I enjoy doing it that day, though mostly I let mulch take care of the weed situation anyway. I've been burning wood to keep warm in the winters for 30 years and have no heat alternate other than a propane space heater for emergencies. After all this time, I know just what I've got to do and how much energy needs to be available to do it. If I'm going to chop wood I chop as long as it feels good to do that day. Ditto with stacking.

I confess mostly I order my wood deliveries already split, though the juniper and aspen always seem to be way too thick for my wood stove - the house is well insulated (it wasn't always -- that's another story). But so what. I choose some that's good to go right into the wood stove, split some that needs it, and so get through my cords of firewood that way just fine.

I'm in the middle of my eighth decade. It took all my life to get me to where I am now, and I eagerly anticipate how much better I can make my life in the years to come. Note I didn't say easier: I mean more joyful. How I live is more basic than most other people. I haul my water into the house by the bucketful, I weed my garden and chop my wood in little bouts of weeding and chopping. But it's the manner in which I do those chores that's important to me, the manner being my state of mind when I do the chores.

I embrace the Zen of acting mindfully and with pleasure in doing each thing well. I accept that if I screw it up I can suffer for it. I wouldn't live any other way.

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Lif Strand
New Mexico USA

Dennis Goyette

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Location: Great North Woods (45th parallel)

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I have to do both.....log my property and some of the neighbor's in exchange for plowing his camp out during the winter (bartering is the way to go.) Logging in early spring and fall, weeding in the summer, but since I use a ground cover between rows, I weed less....then green manure ground cover for garden area not planted chokes out the weeds anyway.

Lif Strand

pollinator

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Scott Weinberg wrote:totes

Those are the frames that the white tanks come in, yes? What do you do with the white tanks?

Lif Strand
New Mexico USA

Scott Weinberg

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Location: North East Iowa, USA

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Lif Strand wrote:

Scott Weinberg wrote:totes

Those are the frames that the white tanks come in, yes? What do you do with the white tanks?

Most of the time they comes without the tanks, but yes those frames did have poly tanks originally, I was at a sale a few weeks back where there was at least 2 dozen, none had tanks with the frames.

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Gaurī Rasp

pollinator

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Location: Near Asheville North Carolina

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Weeding! Very therapeutic! Though I just got a stirrup hoe & it makes weeding SO much easier. A great tool. I weed, put down cardboard then cover it with wood chips for beautiful & low maintenance pathways.

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Eric Silveira

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posted 8 months ago

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Definitely chopping wood, the sound of a clean chop alone makes it so refreshing.

I don't think I've ever seen an ugly cloud, and I don't think I ever will.

Kim Goodwin

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Weeding! Which is my chopping (and dropping).

Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts. ~Wendell Berry

Sara Hartwin

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All morning weeding the garden! I question my endurance to chop wood for that time period.

Aspirations: She seeks wool and flax, considers a field and buys it, girds herself with strength, opens her mouth with wisdom, and does him good all the days of her life. (pieces of Proverbs 31, NKJV)

Riona Abhainn

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Location: Clackamas Oregon, USA zone 8b

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So I'm going with weeding, because I often find volunteer friends in my garden which we can eat, so weeding produces finding non-"weeds" and I plant them in their own pot or leave them put to grow and we eat them with our intentional plants, so weeding is exciting.

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S Smithsson

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Matt McSpadden wrote:If you like the "Would You Rather" game, check out this index of other questions. https://permies.com/t/238000/Permaculture-Edition

Would you rather spend all morning weeding the garden or chopping/stacking wood?

weeding the garden. more productive.

sandy

Zone 6b, dry, high desert in New Mexico 7500' elevation

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Susan Boyce

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Location: Myrtle Creek, Oregon

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posted 6 months ago

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Weeding the garden, I do it now, its good therapy for me, chopping wood can be done with a splitter!

Daphne Rose

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Location: Standish, MI

posted 1 month ago

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I dont chop wood, but I have a routine of cutting firewood with a handsaw every morning except in winter.

Lif Strand

pollinator

Posts: 314

Location: New Mexico USA zone 6

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I do much more wood splitting than weeding. Both of them wreck my back so I mulch heavily so I don't need to weed often. I split at least an evening's worth of wood every day, more if my back will stand it.

Lif Strand
New Mexico USA

Jay Wright

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My wife spent the morning weeding her veg and flower beds. I'll wait 'til almost sundown and do some more scything in my biggest bed- about fifty yards by forty eight. I cut a few armfuls and throw it over the fence for the cows- just a strip that's next in line to be worked up and planted. I just collected a package from the post office containing heritage seed from a variety of pumpkin called "Triamble". Triamble is just a tiny locality about forty miles from here. Used to be half a dozen farms down there plus ours and I'm related to three of the families who lived there. Will try to find out if it was one of those who first grew this variety of pumpkin.
Big wind here a week ago brought down a huge eucalypt about four hundrd yards up the road from us. About a third of the tree is on the road side of the fence and nobody's touched it in a weeek, so I just sharpened the big Stihl and will go an collect a couple of ton. I used to cut and sell firewood and fence posts for a living for several months each year. I quite enjoy it when everything is going well, although today the temperature is well into the nineties and close to a hundred percent humidity- not pleasant at all.

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