Firewood shortage

A couple weeks ago, I stumbled across an article entitled "Americans Panic-Buy Firewood And Stoves Amid Energy Crisis": "The global energy crisis has led to a spike in natural gas, heating oil, propane, and power prices, making the cost of heating a home this fall/winter very expensive. As a result, Americans are panic buying cords of wood and stoves to deflect soaring fossil fuel prices. ... 'Everyone is extremely concerned about how they are going to pay for the cost of home heating,' said Brian Pieck, the owner of House of Warmth Stove and Fireplace Shop in New Milford, a town in rural western Connecticut. He said that concern had led people to panic buying woodstoves, adding his sales for woodstoves over $2,800 are up 50%. 'Our manufacturer is working feverishly around the clock.'"

Curious, I reached out to my contact at Lehman's, Glenda Ervin, and asked if this if this is what she saw reflected in the store. She replied, "Yes, wood heating and cooking stoves are in great demand. One of our wood-cooking stoves has a year-long waiting list, but they are still being pre-ordered!"

I did a little more internet research and saw confirmation of this trend:

• Firewood demand soars amid rising fuel costs:  "Americans' demand for firewood is on the rise thanks to surging fuel prices and firewood suppliers are struggling to keep up. ... Phil Clement, who has operated Phil's Firewood for nearly 30 years in Jefferson County, New York, [said] keeping up with the high demand has been a 'struggle.' 'It's been a lot busier than we've had in the past. It's just never-ending,' Clement said. 'It seems like as soon as you're getting caught up, the phone rings again and you get more orders.' Clement said high fuel prices are unquestionably to blame for the demand for firewood. 'Everybody's worried about (firewood) prices because firewood follows the price of oil,' Clement said. 'It takes diesel fuel to produce the firewood because logging and everything like that runs on diesel fuel.'"

• Feeling the burn: Firewood sales, prices are blazing: "Amid the inflation surge that's rippled through the U.S. economy and touched thousands upon thousands of products, one of the more obscure items on the list is firewood. It's a fuel from earlier times, so niche an industry that no one appears to even try to track pricing on a national level. Talk to firewood vendors in state after state, though, and they'll all tell you the same thing: Sales are booming on the eve of winter, and prices are soaring."

Have others noticed this? Is anyone transitionng to wood heat this winter in response to energy prices?

Unique function for a flashlight

We purchase three-packs of these little flashlights from Costco. They're very bright and perfect for farm use.

We always keep several hanging by the door for quick access when we need to find a missing chicken or see what's bothering the cattle after dark.

These flashlights have three settings: regular, extra-bright, and strobe. The strobe setting always seemed kinda pointless -- I mean, how often are you lost in the woods and require a strobe to alert overhead rescue helicopters where you are? -- so we never used it.

But then one evening after dark, I went looking for several chickens who hadn't made it into the coop and discovered a superb function for the strobe setting: it blinds a chicken so you can pick her up without her attempting to squack and escape. Seriously, it works perfectly.

Last week, we had a bluebird who got into the stovepipe of our parlor stove. (Fortunately it wasn't lit; we seldom use it since installing our wood cookstove.) The bird had made it all the way down the pipe into the stove itself, and was fluttering around in the soot.

The little guy was entirely unhurt. We were tasked with getting the him out of the stove without accidentally releasing him into the house. Don came up with the brilliant notion of using the flashlight strobe to momentarily blind and confuse the bird in order to pick him up.

It worked flawlessly. The parlor stove has a front and a side door, so Don shone the flashlight strobe through the side door while I picked up the bird through the front door. Then I released him outside.

Ya learn something new every day.

Wood cookstove update

A number of you have asked for an update on our Baker's Choice wood cookstove. I'm pleased to report we love it, absolutely flippin' love it.

We've been using the stove exclusively for heat (and almost exclusively for cooking) since December 4. Through trial and effort, as well as a few mistakes, we've been learning the art of wood stove usage and cookery.

One of the most immediately apparent thing is the stove's sheer efficiency. We've heated with wood for almost 20 years, and never has our wood usage been so low nor the house so warm. Part of this is the stove's more central location (compared to our old parlor stove), and part of it is the stove's airtight construction.

(This is our old antique parlor stove. We love it, but we have to admit it can't hold a candle to the cookstove for airtight efficiency.)

With the cookstove, we nearly got smoked out once or twice in the beginning until we learned which dampers to open, and when; but ever since then, we haven't had any problems. The performance of the stove (at least, in our case) is partially dependent on weather. The stove pipe draws better in breezy or windy conditions; during thermal inversions (which sometimes accompany dead-calm days), the stove doesn't draw as well, but we can make up for it by adjusting the dampers accordingly. (Incidentally, if our stovepipe were higher, i.e. over the roof line, these problems would probably be reduced.)

One of the biggest advantages is being able to come down to a warm house in the morning. Prior to this with our old parlor stove and especially during cold snaps, it was not unusual for the house to drop to 50F in the morning, and no matter how much wood we stoked it with, it took hours to warm the house up (and seldom much higher than 60F; we're all used to a cool house).

But now, the stove keeps the downstairs very comfortable, sometimes even too warm (since, as I said, we're all used to a cool house). I no longer have to start a fire from scratch every morning. Instead, all I do is crack open the ash cleanout door (for added venting), add a couple of logs, and let the stove do its job.

At night, Don screws closed the back damper knob and leaves the front knob a bit loose. This closes down the air flow sufficiently that the logs inside simmer all night, burning very slowly and releasing heat evenly over many hours.

On the rare occasions we're all away from home, we do the same thing; it's pleasant to come home to a warm house instead of a cold one.

Because of the stove's sheer efficiency, we estimate we're using 1/2 to 1/3 of the wood we used before. This is a tremendous savings of time, energy, and expense. Imagine cutting your heating bill to 1/3 of what it is now, and you'll understand how tickled we are.

Since we're also using the stove for cooking, our propane usage has also decreased significantly. Twice Don has gone out to check the propane tanks to see if we need to call the gas company to refill them; and twice he's come back, shaking his head and smiling with pleasure, and noting we don't have to call them yet.

One thing we've had to learn is to "time" things differently. Take the kettle, for instance. Usually at night I'll fill it and put it on the warming shelf.

This way in the morning, the water is warmer than room temperature and takes less time to heat to boiling.

I get up early and like to have two mugs of tea, spaced a couple hours apart. I'll open the damper and get the fire going hot, heat the water to boiling, and pour my tea. Then I'll close the damper and put the kettle back on the stove, on the cooler side, to keep warm until I'm ready to re-boil it for my second cup.

If we have guests over but I don't need hot water right away -- say, for our weekly potluck, when coffee is served with dessert -- I put the kettle on early and let it slowly heat up until people are ready for coffee. If I need hot water quicker, I open the damper, fire up the logs, and the kettle will heat just about as quickly as it does on the propane stove.

Cooking is not a problem. I simply treat the stove top as, well, a stove top.

What's nice about a cookstove is since there aren't any "burners," I can crowd many things together.

Things that need to cook more slowly simply get moved to the cooler side of the stove. If something is cooked but needs to stay warm, I put it on the warming shelf.

Baking is a bit more challenging, in part because this model of stove has a small oven.

To bake, I push this back lever in, which reroutes hot air to circulate around the oven box before going up the flue.

While the oven has a thermometer, I don't pay it any attention. I simply keep an eye on whatever is baking. I thought I would have to rotate the food -- since the fire is one one side of the stove box -- but since the heat circulates around the box so evenly, I've found this to be unnecessary.

I have, however, burned things when I let the fire get too hot. It's not an exact science, and I'm still learning the details. However pies and such come out beautifully brown, far nicer than my propane range.

However, times when I need to bake larger volumes of food than the cookstove will hold, I still use the propane range.

We purchased the water reservoir for this model, but have not used it.

One thing we've learned to watch is to not get the fire roaring too hot and too fast. A couple of times we've had what is essentially a chimney fire, where the creosote in the pipe presumably catches fire and sends sparks shooting out the stove cap. We are also careful about cleaning out the pipe about every six weeks.

About every three or four days, we empty the ash tray. This is a simple matter of removing the tray (which has a handle at one end and no lip at the other end) and tipping the ash into a metal bucket. Takes about one minute.

So is there a downside to this stove? Yes. The biggest flaw we've found is the firebrick cracks too easily. They're not really bricks; they appear to be refractory cement which has been cast and shaped. It's more fragile than brick would be.

The cookstove has two possible ways to load the firebox: through the top (by lifting aside one of the round lids), or through the side (apparently only available in the Baker's Choice model). Since we're used to years of loading a woodstove through a side door, we continued to do so with the cookstove.

This means logs sometimes get slammed into the back wall of the stove, hitting the firebrick pretty hard. It's not surprising the back brick cracked in fairly short order.

Because the bricks that came with the stove are specially cut (or cast) to fit the stove, we couldn't just slip in a new firebrick; they have to be special-ordered. Ordering replacement bricks is not only expensive, but people have said the bricks often arrive cracked. They are, after all, quite brittle.

So we looked for alternative ways to repair the crack, and Don came up with the idea of getting refractory cement in a tube.

This comes in goo form, so we let the fire go out, cleaned out the stove, and then Don pushed the goo into the crack. Then we lit a fire to "cure" the goo. We did that about two weeks ago, and so far it's holding up beautifully (and we're trying to be careful not to "slam" logs into the stove).

This stove's efficiency is hard to improve upon. In fact, if you're in the market for a cookstove, I might go so far as to recommend foregoing the prettier or more elaborate antique-style stoves and opt for one of these air-tight stoves (there are three in the line: smallest is Baker's Choice, followed by Pioneer Maid, then Pioneer Princess).

So that's the skinny on our cookstove so far. I'm pleased to report it has exceeded all our expectations and is a wonderful addition to our homestead.

It must be fall

Our nights have been getting chillier, which means chilly mornings in the house. Frustratingly it's been too dry to safely light a fire in the woodstove -- couldn't take the chance a random spark might set something on fire -- but we decided to clean things out for when the weather cooperated.

So out came the stovepipe brushes.

Don removed the lower pipe from its sleeve...

...and we shone a light up the pipe. Definitely time to clean.

The technique we use is to punch a small hole in the bottom of a plastic bag with the rod end of the cleaning brush. Then I wrap the top of the bag around the stovepipe and hold it there while Don scrubs the pipe with the brush. This way all the ash falls into the bag instead of poofing into the living room.

As he shoves the brush upward and ever upward through to the top of the pipe, he screws on lengthener rods one by one. At last the brush bangs into the cap at the top of the pipe, thirty feet up. Then he reverses the procedure and scrubs his way down the pipe.

It's dirty work, despite the plastic bag.

A follow-up check shows the pipe is much cleaner.

A few days later, we had a foggy morning and decided it was okay to light the first fire of the season. Don brought in kindling from the shop...

...and the next morning I lit a fire.

It felt good to heat the house again.

Even after all these years of heating with wood, there's something magical about fires. They're comforting, soothing, cozy. They warm both body and soul.

Heating people, not places

Here's an article I came across awhile ago, the title of which riveted me: Heating People, Not Places.

The article says, "These days, we provide thermal comfort in winter by heating the entire volume of air in a room or building. In earlier times, our forebear's concept of heating was more localized: heating people, not places."

This, in a nutshell, summarizes what I've always loved about our woodstove: it's a point source for heat. When winter comes and the house is chilly, we stand by the woodstove until we're warm and then can go about our tasks.

Because of the advent of central heating, it became popular to heat rooms, not people. People spent more and more money attempting to keep an entire house to a single comfortable temperature. If you were chilly despite all that warm air, you had no option but to raise the thermometer or don extra clothes... and often then, you were still chilly.

I remember during my childhood, my parent's house had central heating. Most modern homes did (and still do). During the oil embargo of the 1970s, heating bills hit my parents hard. In an attempt to save money, they began using the fireplace more often. Everyone knows how inefficient fireplaces are, but it did provide one benefit: if someone was cold, they could sit on the hearth or prop up their feet or hold out their hands... and they got warmer.

In other words, it was a point-source for heat. It was heating people, not places.

Nowadays, without central heating, there are parts of our house that get or stay chilly during the winter. Yet we can't complain we're cold, because whenever we want, we can go stand by the stove and warm up. Even in the summer or other time the stove isn't lit, we will sometimes unthinkingly stand in front of it while conversing with someone, just out of habit.

One time I was explaining the benefits of a woodstove to a friend who has central heating. I said the stove didn't heat the entire house uniformly, but instead acted as a point source for heat. She looked at me, entirely puzzled. "But that would mean you'd have to go stand next to it to get warm," she observed.

"Yes. And then when you're warm, you go about your business until you need to get warm again."

I thought it was an advantage, but she didn't see it that way, and we each concluded the heating system of the other person was inefficient.

I believe I stay warmer during the winter now, with our humble woodstove, than I did when I was a kid, with central heating. Or maybe it's my imagination.

Either way, I prefer to heat people, not places. As we get our wood cookstove installed (which will be far more centrally located than our current woodstove), we may even be able to heat places a little bit too.

An early Christmas present

On Tuesday we took possession of something very large and heavy... my early Christmas present!

Specifically we received a Baker's Choice wood cookstove, purchased through the regional brokerage Obadiah's Woodstoves in Montana.

This was not a spontaneous purchase. It required much thought as well as saving up the money for its purchase. However a cookstove is, we feel, a critical part of a self-sufficient household.

Right now the only source of heat in our house is our beloved antique parlor stove. It does a wonderful job heating; however it's located in one corner a distance away from the rest of the house.

We cluster around it during cold weather, of course; but it also means the other side of the house can be quite chilly during a cold snap.

We had purchased an antique wood cookstove a few years ago, a lovely little piece in excellent condition. Unfortunately it was missing several critical parts, parts we would need to get custom-manufactured before it could be used. A new cookstove has been at the backs of our minds ever since.

Consider this passage from the book Better Off by Eric Brende: "I noticed in nearly every local kitchen a big black, shiny cookstove with a little insignia on the front bearing the words 'Pioneer Maid.' It was an invention of two Amish brothers from Canada, and it was more than an ordinary stove. It was the first-ever application of the principle of airtight combustion to wood-fired cooking. This made it the only notable advance in wood cookstoves in at least one hundred years, probably since the introduction of cast iron. Besides being efficient, the stove was versatile It could cook, bake, maintain a hot water supply, dry vegetables, and heat 2,000 square feet of living space all at the same time. For the local housewife, it was an all-purpose appliance that met most of her heating needs at the touch of her fingertips."

I think it was this passage, more than anything, that made us realize an antique cookstove -- however beautiful -- would never be as efficient as a modern air-tight version.

This line of cookstoves comes in three sizes: Baker's Choice, the larger Pioneer Maid, and the slightly fancier Pioneer Princess. Two of our neighbors own Pioneer Maids and love them. We had neither the space nor the need for the larger versions, so we decided on a Baker's Choice.

When we ordered the stove and placed our deposit, we were told there was a backlog and a waiting period (they're very popular stoves!), and couldn't expect delivery until late December or early January at the earliest. So imagine our surprise and delight when, last week, we received a phone call that the stove was on its way!

Tuesday morning the freight delivery driver called for specific directions to our house. I went to the end of our driveway and peered down the road, anxiously awaiting his arrival.

At last the truck hove into view. The driver later told us he had some scary moments since his truck was sliding badly on the mud coming up the hill.

We were under strict instructions from Obadiah's to inspect and photograph the stove before offloading it, with the right to refuse shipment if it was damaged (by, say, a forklift tine puncturing the side). The driver (a cheerful bespectacled fellow) had delivered these stoves before and knew the routine, so he joined in the inspection.

We noted some damage to the box...

...so we lifted the box off and looked at the stove itself.

We examined it from all sides, and it was in pristine condition.

So we reboxed it and the driver pulled it onto the lift gate.

Then, using a neighbor's tractor with a forklift attachment, Don carefully slid the tines under the box...

...and lifted up the stove. (By the way, the neighbor who owns the tractor was with us, watching. He described me as "giddy," which was dead-on accurate.)

We wished the truck driver a Merry Christmas, then Don transported the stove toward the house.

We parked it in the barn for the time being.

In part because it was delivered early, we're not ready to install the stove in the house just yet. Thankfully we already have a stove pipe extending upward through the roof (remnant of an earlier stove installation from our house's previous owners), so we have no other option where to place the stove.

Once Christmas is over and we remove the tree, we'll move the hoosier hutch to a different spot and install the stove in the hoosier's place (we can't put the stove directly in front of the window, of course). We'll have to construct a fireproof pad and backing as well as get the necessary piping to connect with the ceiling pipe.

So for the time being, we wait. But our neighbor is right: I'm giddy with anticipation and can't wait to learn the art of cooking on a woodstove.

Thank you to my darling husband for my Christmas present!