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Yesterday, 52 got a friend from work and Boomer to help finish putting together the pipe for the woodstove. Boomer was especially instrumental in the completion of the project.
There were a couple of ladders involved.
And straps and pulleys and…. I DON’T KNOW. I didn’t do any of this stuff. Tell me when it’s time for the simmering potpourri!
There was a cute little stack of firewood waiting.
And then (FINALLY!) this old woodstove strolled inside and said, “Hello, home.”
And I said, “HELLO, LOVER, get over here, where have you been all my life?!”
I’ve never had a woodstove before. I’ve had fireplaces, but not a woodstove. I love fireplaces, but there is something different and interesting and functional about a woodstove. I love how you can open and close the door to the fire. I love how there is a surface on top to place pots and kettles. I love how I’ve never had one before because I love to experience new things.
I love that it uses something freely given to me by the thick woods around me. I love how it will keep the house so warm this winter. I don’t like to be cold. I know what cold is.
One year (be sure you click on that link in the paragraph above) when we were living at the old farmhouse, it was zero degrees. Okay, did you read that right? I said, ZERO. In an old farmhouse with no insulation. And cracks. I used to wear my coat and gloves. INSIDE. And then the propane stove broke. My cousin’s son, Madison, came over one day when it was zero and the propane stove was broken (and the pipes were frozen) and I was at the end of my icy rope and, having stood in the frozen little farmhouse for about one minute, he said, “It’s not that cold in here.”
The amazing end of that story is that he’s still alive.
Let’s just say I have an appreciation for heat.
And YEAH BABY, heat is IN THE HOUSE!!!!
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You are ready for winter, a full pantry, full freezers and a wonderful fire stove. Now maybe you can relax a bit by a cozy fire with a pot of potpourri simmering away, have a nice cup of tea and reflect about all you have done this past year.
Thank goodness for 52.
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There was always a big kettle of water on the heating stove and cookstove for washing up in the washpan.Sunday nights were bath nights. We’d carry buckets and buckets of water from the well and heat the water in a washtub on the big kitchen stove. When it was warm enough, we took our baths, cleanest ones first. There were 9 of us kids.We all piled in the same bed together , some at the head of the bed, some at the foot, under a big old quilt.
I couldn’t wait to leave home and have modern things.The outhouse in winter was another story.
I’m 63 years old now, and haven’t lived like that for 56 years.I don’t miss it.
Having said all that (and this post is long, I know)I would love to have a wood stove in my home now, along with my central heat and air.
I LOVE YOUR STOVE!
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Enjoy!
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joy c.
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Where I live it can get to -15 to -20 zero.
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Our fireplace saved us many times during electrical outages in the winter.
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but let it whistle as it will,
we’ll keep our Christmas merry still
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Nothing better in the world. We had one in our first house. I’d set a pot of beans on it, and they’d cook all day. Oh, the house smelled good.
Please thank that pup for helping so nicely. He’s a good feller!
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Are you going to get any of that Ida stuff?
And when can we vote for you again?
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I love your new stove!
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Ruthie
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That boy is blessed with very high metabolism – - he produces heat like a blast furnace so he is almost never cold! I wish we were all so lucky.
A woodstove is really an essential around here in the winter. When the power goes off, most heating systems rely on electricity to operate their thermostats and blowers. So, no power equals no heat.
During the Great Blizzard of 1994, we were out of power for 7 days here on the hard road end of Suzanne’s and my location. I kept a big pot on my wood stove and melted show in it for washing. I sat a bucket of snow beside the stove to melt so that it could be the cold water to mix with the hot from the stove pot. We had 24 inches of snow on our back deck. We took a shovel and made a hole in the snow to insert a cooler. In this cooler, we placed our milk, butter, cheese and eggs from the household refrigerator. This kept the perishables well. Our freezers were in unheated outbuildings so we didn’t loose any frozen stuff!
Also, no power means no water with an electric well pump. I have learned to fill up the bathtubs with water before a storm system moves in. This water can be dipped out for flushing the toilet. Also, we usually keep several clean, used milk jugs to draw up some drinking water. The last couple of years, I have bought 8 – 10 gallons of “store-bought” water to have on hand in case of power outages.
Suzanne, with your preparations and your stockpile of aluminum foil, I think you are ready for winter!
The old farmhouse was a great teacher for many things including winter survival. You have mastered all the survival lessons! Your Grandmother Opal and Great-Aunt Ruby would be so proud of you!
I can’t wait to watch Madison have a home of his own and manage his own heat/air conditioning along with his POWER BILL. I am going to laugh when he tells me that he has had to adjust his thermostats to keep his power bill down.
Have a great day!
PS – I hear that we are supposed to have a harsh and stormy winter. Your wood stove is installed just in time for the oncoming weather!
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I’m so glad you posted this. You brought back a lot of GOOD memories from my childhood. When our electric would go out, everyone would come to our house because we were the only ones that didn’t have an ELECTRIC heater or stove.
Word to the wise, clean that glass OFTEN. It’ll need it!
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Enjoy that lovely fire & the simmering pot of pot pourri!
Blessings from Ohio…
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Looks like the new stove has a blower. Be sure to use it – they are great for the keeping the whole house warmer.
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It is very drying, so, as said above, keep a container of water on it. A tea kettle is a great wood stove water container as you can just pour simmering water for tea anytime. I have a tall, old fashioned cut flower holder half full of water on one side of mine. I am looking for a black iron kettle to put on the other side but non-electric kettles are hard to find! I don’t understand that! Don’t people use them when camping?
I make soap on my wood stove and I simmered some apple cores and peelings for the chickens on it today too, in just a stainless bowl. It will simmer water if a big fire is going but its not constant. I can feel when it cools off in the house and the fire needs attention.
It is more work but its good outdoor exercise. We are planning on making wood our only source of heat this winter and are in the process of buying wood. We will supplement it with out own wood too. You will need a place to stack the wood that is out of the weather where it can stay mostly dry. We are filling our front porch with it. We figure it will take at least four bush cords to get us through the winter up here, with no other source of heat. We do have an oil furnace, but don’t plan to use it this year.
Make sure any wood you use has been cut and left outside, off the ground, to dry for at least 6 mos before burning it. This will help prevent a build up of creosote. You don’t want a creosote fire! Using only hard wood will help too.
Very dry softwoods will burn well, but be gone fast and not last long enough to do much and have too much pitch, but small, dry branches make good kindling.
Enough dry kindling is the secret to getting a fire started. Let me tell you, I have had mornings where it took me a full 45 mins just to get a fire started! That’s frustrating! Don’t be skimpy on the kindling, it makes a big difference. Collect all the branches you can now, before the snow falls and keep them in a dry place. You will also want to start saving your non-glossy newspaper and plain brown cardboard to start fires.
We stocked up on bbq fire starter this fall. A little, well placed squirt of that stuff will go a long way towards getting the big logs to catch. Its not that readily available in the middle of winter. Now is the time to buy it and it will probably be on sale, as now is the end of the camping/bbq season. BBQ fire starter is made for that purpose, but you still have to be very careful with it. Don’t use gasoline or karosine or something else more dangerous and save it for those really hard to start fires when you don’t have 30 mins to mess with it.
I keep a small electric heater in the bathroom that I can turn on when I go in there. I don’t like to freeze while taking a shower or getting dressed, etc. and no heat from the wood stove gets in the bathroom while the door is closed.
You might want to enlarge the fire proof flooring around that area to keep flying embers from burning tiny brown spots in your floor. What you have there is not big enough when you are stirring the fire and a log falls or rolls and burning orange embers fly out of the stove when you have the door open. An acrylic, flame proof mat or rug will work too, but will soon be covered with ash. Real fires are dirty. You will be sweeping up little bits falling off the logs and ashes all the time. It just goes with the territory.
I LOVE my wood stove. It is worth all of the above inconveniences!!
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My mother gave husband and I a wood stove. It’s called an “Earth Stove”. It doesn’t have a glass door, which is fine with me….no scrubbing it. We had the wood stove sitting in the corner of our dining room for 10 years before we finally hooked it up. Triple wall pipe is NOT cheap. And we have a two story BARN of a house!
Back in I think 2001, we had the worst snow/sleet/ice storm. I live in town, but the fact that you have NO electricity ANYwhere, is hard on EVERYone. And there sat my woodstove….in the corner…not hooked up. Thank goodness we had a gas stove! I had the oven on and during the day I had the burners going. Husband was driving thru the stuff to a nearby town for his job. But daughter and I were pretty much “in the dark” at night. Do you know how hard it is to read a book with candle light? The flame flickers and jumps…which also makes your words and sentences jump. I swear I had read one sentence at least a dozen times before I went on and read more of a book! We do have a big house 2500 sq feet. And our cookstove still kept us warm, although we did layer our clothing too. Our pipes never froze, which is a miracle. But we heard trees crashing all over the neighborhood…sounding like bombs going off. Lots of houses didn’t fair so well… trees falling on houses, electric lines down…live wires jumping around emitting sparks…We didn’t open our deep freeze unless we absolutely had to. The less you open the door, the longer the frozen things stay cold. We did move the food from the fridge to a couple of coolers and sat them outside. I had never had such a good time though… even though going thru internet withdrawals. We played alot of board and card games, read ALOT of books, and knitted….well my daugher and I knitted.
NOW we have our earth stove hooked up. We’ve had it goin for the past 7 or 8 years. LOVE IT! It is definitely a dry heat. We have an old coffee can full of water sitting on top. And yes… if we have another ice/snow storm, we are prepared big time now. The stove really puts out the heat, even though it has no blower. And since it sits on ceramic tile floor…the critters don’t have to get super close to the stove to get warm….the heat sorta radiates and warms the cold tiles. I don’t like the dust, or the dirty windows….but I just turn my head away from that. By the way, we were stuck at our house during that storm for over a week! And for a few weeks after that, we still had people without electricity or running water. Schools and churches were opening their doors for people who had no heat, no water, and in some cases…no roof! It sounded like a war zone outside. And after the storm stopped, all a person could hear was chainsaws and limbs falling on the ground, and city vehicles with the back up beepers beeping away. It really was an adventure. And if we have another winter like that… we are prepared. Freezer and cupboards full of canned jars of home grown veggies and bags of froze veggies….and the warmest wood stove with lots and lots of firewood. Nothing like roughing it to make you thankful for what you do have. And if something happened like that storm again… we have plenty of room for any neighbors that needed a warm place to stay in.
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We put a real antique one in our first house, so cozy and homey.
In our current house we bought a antique looking, but high efficiency stove, we love that one even more.
Homey, cozy and good on firewood.
I think this kind of heat is the best heat there is…
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Our power goes out quite a bit in the winter but just for an evening or so. We have a chair ledge behind the sofa which we fill with candles to read. Works great, but you need a lot of them to get good light to read or work by. A mirror behind them helps a lot too. It uses up a lot of candles so I buy them all summer long at garage sales just to be prepared.
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I can’t imagine a winter now without wood heat!
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Best way to keep warm is a wood stove. You are ready for winter. Hope you’ve been stacking up the firewood. Just think, it’s snowing outside, bread baking in the oven, roaring fire, good book, glass of wine. Ahhhh.. all the hard work has paid off.
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