We heat almost totally with wood here - although we have electric back up, we don't turn on any electric heat unless winter temperatures go down to -20 Celsius. We use our woodstove a lot - but we still needed a little something to push that woodstove heat into our living room. And that's why I bought a wood stove fan. It's an Ecofan 812AMXBX AirMax and I LOVE it so much I want to write about … [Read more...]
Finding Free Firewood
Filling the woodroom - it's one of our Top 5 "W" chores every spring. And we have been hard at it for the last several weeks. And we love finding free firewood! We heat our 3000 square foot house almost entirely with our woodstove. Once winter temperatures hit -20C, we turn on two basement baseboard heaters, just so water lines don't freeze. The house stays toasty warm … [Read more...]
Cleaning Out the Woodstove
Winter afternoons can be beautiful in the Cariboo. The temperature rises and it's wonderful being outside in the sun. But once the sun dips down, it cools off fast and it's nice to come in to a nice warm fire. Since we use our woodstove steadily throughout late fall and all winter, we need to make sure we clean out the ashes on a regular … [Read more...]
How Much Wood Can Annie Chuck?
How Much Wood Can Annie Chuck, if Annie Could Chuck Wood? Well, I can and I did. When we moved here in 2006, there was a small wood room already here on the far side of the driveway, used by the previous owners. We enlarged it to about double the size. We have found that in a very cold winter here, we use just over half of the total wood stored … [Read more...]
Bacon & Eggs on the Woodstove
Not long ago, I wrote about some of the virtues of a woodstove. Not only is a woodstove a great way to heat your home, it can also be used for cooking. Since our woodstove has a flat top, we use it for cooking fairly often, especially when it is Really Cold outside. There's something very satisfying about cooking on a woodstove - I'm not sure what it is. Maybe it's the warmth from the stove … [Read more...]
Cooking on the Wood Stove
Having a wood stove for heat is an wonderful thing - being able to cook on it is even better. We love cooking on the wood stove. But, our wood stove is NOT a cook stove, it is just a wood stove for heating our home. Doesn't matter! We are able to cook on it because our stove has a flat top. We have electric heat as well, although we don't even turn on the baseboard heaters unless it is -20C … [Read more...]
Cleaning out Dead Wood
Although our woodroom now holds enough to see us through until next summer, I've been asking Graham to take down just 1 more tree. Can you tell which one is the one I want down? This Spruce has been dead for a few years now and since we still have some room on our wood stacks, it's time for this one to come down. I don't really like having to see it when … [Read more...]
Filling the Wood Shed
Things have been so busy around the homestead that I haven't been able to keep up with posting new articles about what we have been up to. Now, as I sit in Vancouver, I finally have time to get caught up, at least a bit. We use our woodstove almost exclusively for heating our house and it is not a small house. It's almost 3000 square feet and we have the woodstove situated in the centre of the … [Read more...]
Cleaning up the Wood Shed
I've got the garden all in, finally. It dragged on this year, mostly due to all the rain we have had. I try to stay out of the garden when it's raining, because I just end up carrying mud on my boots and walking around on wet soil isn't good for it. Besides, there are roughly a million other things to get done here. We have no problem at all keeping busy on the homestead, it seems that the jobs … [Read more...]
