Routines

I like having a cook stove in the kitchen. We have an antique glenwood, maybe an A model. It's pretty basic, fire box on the left, draft goes over the oven, down the right side, under the oven and up the back of the stove to the damper. With decent wood, it's easy to get 500 degrees F in the oven. The surface of the stove is hot enough that we use firebricks with an 2" air gap to have a warming area. I usually keep a baking stone in the oven. It's convenient, with that kind of heat sitting around in the kitchen it's easy to warm up leftovers in a skillet, make a toasted sandwich on the baking stone, etc. All that hot cast iron holds a lot of energy at the ready.

The Glennwood keeps our part of the house warm all winter. We do have a radiant floor in the bathroom, but that comes off the trap room, so it has no air flow from the kitchen. The stove doesn't run for much more than an hour untended, so things cool off by morning. But the house is comfortable for us.

It takes some doing to orchestrate it, though. Last spring, I was collecting trees and cutting wood. The tree crew for the power lines came through. Because I was available, they were more aggressive about the size trees they cut. One of the guys said he dropped his largest diameter tree yet that day. Me being there with the tractor meant they only had to get the tree down and they could drop it in the road. They would normally have to cut up the down wood. For me, they left it in the largest pieces I could take away. That made it easier for me, less handwork than picking up a lot of small pieces. It also means it's cut up the way I like it for my stove. One of my neighbors also had several trees come down. It's their second home, so they don't have much want or need for the wood and were happy to have it disappear. Between those two sources, I have at least two years worth of wood.

I like to minimally split my wood for seasoning and wait until later to split it down to kitchen wood. I am will have to handle it a couple of times to get it into the house wood shed, so keeping it in large pieces means I don't have to handle so many. In the fall I brought down this years wood to the house and stacked it in a stock panel wood shed. Now, I go out to woodshed daily and split a bunch of big chunks into kitchen wood.

We use five gallon buckets to manage wood from the shed into the kitchen. There is a rack near the stove for four buckets. The buckets catch the falling wood detritus and melting snow, etc. They are also a handy measure. Depending on the wood quality and how it's split, five to eight buckets of wood feed the stove all day.

The Glenwood has a satisfying number of controls. It loads through the eyes on top. There are two draft controls on the fire box, a lever for the diverter to send the flu gasses around the oven, a slider damper on the back of the stove and a damper in the round stovepipe above the stove. Each has it's own particular metal clank, thud, scrape or squeal. They are often uncomfortably hot to touch and I use the stove iron to hook or push them. There is an oven door temperature indicator and a flu thermometer. I can hear the draft and the tone of the fire. Standing near the stove I can feel if the fire is ebbing and the stove is cooling off. It is not unlike running an old engine that is adjusted with nudges, done by feel and confirmed by listening.

I have a routine in the morning. Up and start the fire while I make the boy something to eat. Bring in the milk cooler that skimmed over with ice overnight. Fill water buckets for the animals while the coffee steeps. Keep an eye on the stove. As the kindling warms to flu, watch for the flu to come up to temp and shift the diverter around the oven when it is drawing sufficient. Put in some small square wood that will catch easialy edge the fire up. Take empty wood buckets out to the shed on the way to the animals. Feed and water the goats. Loose the chickens and put out their grain. Bring the water buckets back to the trap room and check the fire. Put in some larger wood and set the draft for heat. Out to the woodshed, split and fill the buckets until the rack in the kitchen is full. Wash up and head out to milk. Don't forget a black coffee to make a goat latte with milk straight from the teat. Measure out the grain. Bring out Sparque who is always in a rush. Milk Heddar. Drink coffee. Relax a minute, watch the goats. Deal with any animal issues that show themselves. Put out more hay. The milk has been air chilling at these temps just hanging in the milking shed any way. Back in with the milk. Check the fire. Filter the milk into quart bottles and on into the ice bath to chill. Refill the kitchen wood buckets that got used and cut kindling for tomorrow's fire. Stop lallygagging and get to the days work.

A woodstove warms you three times

One of my son's great loves is apples. He is 2-1/2 and says "aaple?" sweetly and innocently. As if he can't remember what an awful mess we find in his diaper after a day of too much aaple.

But dried apples seem to help the problem. At least they slow him down enough that he doesn't end up eating a whole apple. Or two.

And the apples from our tree are getting soft. Drying apples is yet another thing our glenwood does well. There's something really pretty about a string of apples drying over the stove.

My wife cooked us a pork dinner on the stove the other night. It's tricky getting the stove top hot enough to boil the potatoes without overheating the oven and burning the roast, but she did a great job. It was a Loin End Roast and it is one of the best roasts we have done. It was tender and flavorful with a little crispiness on the outside that we like so much.

We were also happy about how close to home the food was. The potatoes were from our garden, same with the leeks and carrots. Milk for the potatoes from our goats. Pork from a local farm where we buy whole pigs. I think the only thing that came from away was the mushrooms.

A man said a fire warms you twice, once when you cut the wood and once when you burn it. I think I would add to that a cook stove warms you three times, for the hot meal that comes off it. and if you really want to get into it, again for the leftovers a day later.

Ferris' Favorite Spot by Far

That's Ferris' favorite sport by far. in the heat behind the wood stove.

It's not uncommon for the oven to get to 500 if we don't open the door. Ferris likes it hot. And it appears to be good for her. For years she had dread lock tangles in her hair (she is not an overly clean cat). But since we have added the wood stove to our kitchen, the dread locks have disappeared and her coat and cleanliness have much improved. She'll spend hours behind or under the stove. I would imagine the temp under there is over 100 F if not higher.

Getting Cleaned up for work

I had to do some things this weekend that I really didn't want to. The weather has been been getting colder and it would nice to light a fire in the kitchen stove. But when I looked at the condition of the stove pipe, I knew I couldn't get away with running the stove before cleaning the chimney and stove.

In the stove I found about an inch deep of fly ash under the hob as well as under the oven. No creosote, though.

The meat of the job was cleaning the chimney, though. Not a job I relished.

The chimney comes out of the center of the Elle, the middle of the ridge line. Just guessing, but I think the ridge line is about 30 feet above ground. Thirty feet up in a 45 degree slate roof isn't really my favorite place to spend a Sunday afternoon. I am not fond of heights without a safety. I've done some rock climbing, but always with a safety. I didn't much like standing on that peak with nothing to hold onto but the chimney. This kind of work it pays to do slowly and careful.

That's a pail full of creosote we shoveled out of the thimble. I bet things flow a little better without that inch of crust caking the inside of the stove pipe.

Negative numbers

Lately, it's been chilly around here. Zero is the day warming up. It was negative nine when we got up and it was negative twenty the other morning.

To combat these temperatures, we use a pretty tried and true approach, a wood stove in living area to give a point source for heat. A large high temperature object in the room warms the air and more importantly gives off radiant heat. With that radiant heat, the air temperature in the room can be a lot lower and still comfortable.


But the woodstove isn't just about comfort heat. That's bread rising on the upper shelf, a molasses wheat. I really enjoy fresh bread and everything that goes with it. We can get the oven on the woostove up to about 450 F. It's a little tricky keeping a steady temperature and given the hot fire box on one side means it is important rotate the bread in the oven.

With a little monitoring, though, they come out even. This batch did.