My dad has seemed to stumble upon a new tradition. I guess at a certain point you have everything you need and birthdays get more and more challenging to communicate what you would like for a practical birthday present. It's not like he can realistically ask for a new truck for his birthday, but my Dad does have four boys, men now, that have good strong backs. That's where the firewood comes into hand.
A few years back my parents moved out of their neighborhood home of 18 years to a little seven-acre farm in the country. With this move came the departure from a cozy decretive fire on holidays to the stove being the workhorse of their homes heating system. My dad being a timber faller, getting access to firewood was never the problem, it's getting it off the mountain and into his woodshed where the bottleneck occurs.
So what do you do with a birthday for a man that has what he needs, but what he does need requires a lot of labor and that same man happens to have four young men for kids, you mix them and have a firewood cutting birthday party. So we all went up and helped him get what he needed.
The weather started off nice, but rain was in the forecast. We worked as fast as we could but still ended up getting pretty soaked at the end. After we got all the wood loaded up, transported back the farm, the unloaded, we built a fire to warm ourselves up as we enjoyed a BBQ dinner with the rest of the family. Happy Birthday, Dad!
