THE WOODBOX SYSTEM

(Page 2 of 2)

January/February 1975
By Jody Briggs 
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The crates are made inexpensively from slabwood ... lumber with bark on one or more sides, available as a waste product from any sawmill. I buy this material-at roughly $10.00 a cord for hardwood-to be used as supplementary fuel. It makes excellent kindling and small pieces for the kitchen range. As I cut the slabs to stove length, I save aside the best and most regular pieces for box construction (especially chunks that are square on three sides and have bark on the fourth).

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Working with slabs as I do, I don't worry much about trying to make the boxes perpendicular or exactly the same size. I just square 'em by eye and nail them together. (Nails are my only real expense. . . I use the threaded kind because they're supposed to hold better). The crates don't have to be works of art, since they can't be seen once they're inside the cabinet by the stove. Eventually they wear out and end up in the fire with the other slabwood.

If you give my system a try, you'll find it has several benefits apart from eliminating unnecessary handling of loose pieces. One is that the crates permit you to get more fuel into the woodshed: You can pile it higher (because the boxes stack well) and tighter (because a filled crate can be shaken down and topped up again). Also, if your storage area is one corner of the barn, you don't have to build retaining walls to keep the wood from taking over the rest of the space. And the containers make it easier to separate kindling from big pieces.

Another point in favor of this method is that it stabilizes something that's hard to control in its loose form. You know how a row of firewood tends to lean forward a bit and end up all over the floor . . . or how a wheelbarrow seeks out rocks and potholes so that you spill most of the load? Well, with the sticks wedged tightly in a box, you lose the whole container instead . . . and a single unit is a lot easier to pick up and put back.

That's all there is to the woodbox system, and it sure saves time and energy. Chances are a lot of homestead chores could be organized along the same lines. True simplicity, after all, isn't messy or exhausting . . . and what hope brought us to the boondocks in the first place?

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