Heating With Wood

While heating with wood makes a comeback around the U.S., here on the homestead, it’s far more than a smart economic move, it’s a necessity. Wood is our only source of heat. Both the main cabin and the guest/boat house have woodstoves; the main cabin uses a wood-fired hot water tank. Our sailboat uses a tiny marine woodstove. Eventually, our sauna will be wood-fired, and I long to install a stove in our shop.

As you can imagine, then, I spend a lot of time thinking about firewood. As we hike around our property, I’m constantly “timber cruising,” watching for deadfalls that would likely yield firewood. We spend a great deal of time and effort bucking logs, hauling, chopping, and stacking.

And generally, what I think about, I write about. In the future, I’ll expand on these topics and more:

• Obtaining firewood
• Stacking firewood for seasoning
• Cooking on a woodstove
• Cleaning woodstove glass
• Chimney sweeping

I’ll also be ruminating, no doubt, on ecological impacts, the danger of choosing the wrong wood, new scientific evidence that none of us want to be true, and other aspects that I and others have mulled over—most often while we sit enjoying the warmth of a glowing fire.