Getting Ready For Fall - Storing Wood

The end result of the kids clearing off the front porch in order to make room for...

...lots of wood for winter.  We only have one source of heat in the house, a wood stove in the living room.  Amazingly, it does heat the entire house, top to bottom and back to front. 

There was an old oil furnace in the basement when we moved here 2.5 years ago,  along with 2 old oil tanks.  All 3 were done and had to come out and have not yet been replaced.  We have a 2-year-old used oil furnace and tank bought and waiting to go in but we need to finish digging out the basement dirt floor first.  A lot of drudgery work as each heavy bucket load has to be carried up the old, crooked steps, dumped into the tractor and carted away.

http://huonview.blogspot.ca/2010/09/apple-crates-in-place.html
We tried storing the wood in large apple crates like the ones above and putting the crates in the garage throughout the winter but this did not work out so well.  Too bad, too because the crates were easy enough to move around with the forks on the tractor.  On the days when the sun was shining outside, the ice on the wood inside the crates in the garage never thawed.  If it rained, snowed or was freezing rain outside, the liquid, one way or another found its way into the garage under the garage door in spite of us putting old towels, blankets, etc. under the door.  This liquid would invariably turn to ice, seldom thaw before winter was over and create a slippery floor that we had to walk on several times a day to get wood.

I expected the front porch to be a worse choice but last winter when we tried it as a last resort, it turned out to be much better.  If the weather warmed up, the wood warmed up also and the snow and ice melted.  We only had to go a step or 2 outside the front door and we seldom had any ice where we had to walk.  So we're doing it again this year.  The only possible downside is that most people would not like the look or mess of wood on their front porch but I don't really mind it at all.  It looks like the country to me!

1940 Applalachian Pioneer's Mountain Life And Their Children

I've watched this video quite a number of times and do not get tired of it.  I can't believe that we are lucky enough to have real footage like this to view, review, get ideas from, etc.

I believe I recognize that floor at 1:43.  It looks exactly like the old floor in the back kitchen of our first farmhouse and I used to sweep the dirt down through the floorboards, just like at 1:51.

I've never seen a steel barrel used inside the house for heat, only outside for burning garbage.  The insurance companies would have a fit nowadays if they saw a steel barrel used for heat.  They don't even want them used outside.  Farmers have used them for decades to burn their garbage.  After watching quite a few episodes of the show "Trashopolis", I've come to the conclusion that governments all over the world have no single, simple idea on how to dispose of garbage properly and cleanly and therefore, the farmers have likely been doing a better job.  At any rate, the price of a new wood stove would have been out of the reach of the average 1940 family if they also had to buy a wood kitchen cookstove.  I've seen lots of ideas on Youtube for outdoor cooking from small metal coffee cans to larger barrels.  As my mom used to say, everything old is new again!

Sources of Heat #2

After I put the photo into yesterday's post, I couldn't continue.  No idea why but I'll continue now.  The gas heater in the photo looks very similar to our old one and yes, ours was a lovely brown colour, too!  It was 3-4 feet long and 2-3 feet wide so it was pretty much a piece of furniture.  The best part about it, besides the instant heat, was the height --- bum height!  Just high enough to lean your butt back against and talk about warm and cozy!  Well, at least it would work that way if you were already leaning when someone turned the heat up.  Many was the time, though, when someone turned the heat up first, then someone else came along and, unaware, took a seat!  Great fun to listen to them yelp, as long as it wasn't me!!  Kinda kidding.  Don't want anyone hurt!

In spite of the wonderful times spent with our gas heater, I still wanted a wood stove.  I blame Laura Ingalls for that, of course!  For setting my sights so high, for giving me such lofty ideas!  A wood stove in the city!  Indeed!  What was I thinking?!  Perhaps I was thinking that the world needs a little more of a pioneering spirit, a little more back-to-the-land spirit, a little more down-hominess, a little more down-to-earth-iness.  Nothing wrong with getting our hands dirty and nothing wrong with a little hard work to teach us to appreciate our resources - maybe I was thinking that.  No matter what I was thinking, I still blame Laura!

http://www.ashbusters.net/