They say fire wood heats multiple times, from the time you cut it down to the time you put it into the wood stove. I'm leaving out about a half dozen steps, including this one, splitting it. Most of this wood is black birch, one of the best fire woods you can find in western North Carolina. It smells like wintergreen and mint when you split it.

One of my all time favorite photos- a puddle in our driveway that's reflecting the hill on the other side of the valley we live in.

My wife's Haflinger Pie and my mules Cracker and Polly in my old horse trailer. It's at least fifty years old and is the only two-horse trailer that can haul three animals that I've ever seen.

Brick waiting for me to take her for a trail ride.

Everyone should have a best buddy to roughhouse with. My mules Brick and Cracker and horsing (mule-ing?) around in the pasture just off our front porch. A few moments after I took this photo, they were grazing calmly next to each other.

I caught this little fellow in the brook that runs by the cabin. Check out his head and you'll see why they're called horny heads. Horny heads are a type of chub that only grow a few inches long and I used to love catching them as a kid. Just to gently rub the bumps on their hears, not to eat them. They're way too small for that. I let this one go seconds after I caught it.

I took this photo by mistake while I was walking through the forest but I really like it

The sun rising over the apple orchard on top of our mountain. The bristly seed heads are foxtail which are pretty to look at but lousy to make hay with (the seed heads can get stuck in a horse's gums, tongue and throat).

I sent Dylan a few heads of garlic from our garden. He lives in a big city where they don't write on tulip poplar leaves much.

This is the stream behind our cabin. I love how it runs quieter when it's full of leaves.