Tales of a wood stove:

Posted on | January 20, 2012 | 2 Comments

We purchased our dream home in April 2010 - an older home on private, wooded acreage.  Not everyones dream, by any means, but it fulfilled ours.  Along with it came a wood stove as a secondary source of heat, forced air being the primary.  We were so excited to start using it for many reasons - obviously economical reasons, but also the ambiance of having a wood stove in the home and having a large supply of fuel on our property.  Within about four months of living here, when we first started having fires, we decided to have a chimney sweeper come to clean it out.  Long story short: our lovely yet archaic woodstove was not to 'code' despite that never being mentioned in our initial inspection.  We accepted this and didn't fret; after all, we had a working source of heat for the winter months.

Fast forward nearly two years later, and we finally installed a properly working wood stove this past week.  It is absolutely amazing what a difference it has made: once we have a roaring fire in there, the house stays warm nearly all day (as opposed to our forced air which turned on every 20 minutes, and we always felt cold - definitely something that bothered me with the coming attraction into our lives!).

I've already put it to good use with a little inspiration of some friends - Wooly Moss Roots and Cold Antler Farm, to name just two.  Last night I experimented with an easy from scratch bread recipe, and I let it rise next to the stove overnight (the bowl with the towel covering it).  This morning I boiled a pot of water for raspberry leaf tea, and we have also been using a kettle to humidify the area.  Finally, tonight I hung a load of laundry to dry next to the stove.  I can just picture our cloth diapers hanging soon (is it weird I'm excited about that?)!

So there you go: one more puzzle piece of our little homestead (at least I like to call it that) complete.  Does anyone else have a wood stove - if so, please share ideas you use your wood stove for, I would love to hear!

Comments