This little beauty and I have become really close friends. This past week has been brutally cold. I'm sure most of you have had the same problem. Since this is the only heat we have in our house right now, we had to run it wide open almost all the time. At night we shut it down a little. I still had to get up every two hours and put wood in the stove. As we looked back on last week though, we realized that the wood we used was extremely dry and sponge like. It burnt real fast. We did some trading for a good load of wood just a few days ago and it seems like this wood will work better. It's not as dry and will hold up longer. Both types of wood were oak, but one load was just from a tree that had been dead for a while. We needed to get it out of our field. Hey, don't ever over look free firewood. It worked for a while.
I don't remember if this is an old stove, but this is our new one. It puts off a lot more heat than our last one. A. LOT. This one is made of steel and holds the heat so much better. I plan on using stove black on this later in the spring. We needed the heat so we really didn't care about the small amount of rust it had on it.
See that red pot on the top? Yep, that's full of brown beans and a ham hock. Yummmmmmm! Nothing like cooking on the stove on a cold day.
I also wanted to tell everyone about my rabbits. I bred two does. Only one had babies. Well, A baby. It was a big black kit. Dead. I won't blame it all on the doe though, this was her first litter and it was extremely cold when she had it. I'm still gonna try with the breeding. I made some rabbit noodle soup the other day and I fell in love with it. If the rabbit breading doesn't work, then I'm just going to end up getting some creepy meat chickens. I know I can raise them.(As long as I can keep dogs out of them.)
This week is suppose to be a little warmer so hopefully I won't be a slave to the stove and I can get a few things done around the house. We shall see.
So until next time,
Small Farm Girl, staying warm
12 comments:
Hi. I'm in Australia so we are having very hot and humid weather here at the moment. But when winter comes around I light my wood stove and cook on it too! We are very lucky and have a friend with a huge farm who lets us come and get as much firewood as we want. All for free! So when autumn comes we will begine the harvest of firewood and stockpile it here at our place. Reqdy to split and burn. Enjoy your yummy meal
We have had some single digit temps over the last week and we heat with wood. One stove is cast iron while the other two are steel and all 3 are connected to stainless steel flues. I use the low grade wood during the day and the good stuff at night. The cast iron one is in the bedroom and burns out quickly but it works for one room. I pass up very little wood these days.
SFG,
Love that stove.
Got the opportunity to buy a 1908 stove from my sister's MIL, but she wanted too much $$ that we can afford right now. But, it did include many cast iron pots that i had hoped she would sell separately but to no avail.
What a beautiful stove! We have a wood cook stove that's sitting in the basement (awaiting placement in our outdoor kitchen...hopefully before I die). I wish we has a place for it in the house, I'd love to be able to "really" cook food in it. Right now, we just cook beans or stew or soup on the wood stove, although I have made cookies on it once or twice, but it's touch & go.
Stay warm!
love the stove!! Ours is cast iron but not a cook stove. however we have used it for cooking over the years when needed or when making beans.. The spongy wood burns quick and puts out little heat.. hate it when we get some of that. Hedge or good seasoned oak is my favorite to burn.. Good hot and small amount of ash compared to others..
We love our wood stoves too. They are cast iron. Usually we an heat our home using just them. But we as many have been really cold this last week, colder than normal and our heater has kicked on a couple times during the night. Yes that spongey wood burns fast but we have burned it as well because it was as you say a fallen tree on our land. Free wood.
SFG,
Great looking stove!!! I would use it for cooking and heat too.
I can smell your beans and hamhocks all the way over here, lol.....
We have just put a wood burning stove in but it will be used for next winter because the plumbing to it has not been done yet!
Oh Angela, I could use some of that warm weather right now. Send some my would okay?
Sunny Brook, ya, we don't pass up on much wood either. lol.
DFW, too bad! That would have been great! This whole "money thing" gets old! lol
Carolyn, my actual wood cook stove had to be disconnected from the chimney so that we could put this new stove in. I WILL be getting that hooked back up. lol
Tonia, this stove isn't really a cook stove either, but it works real good for a pot of beans. We got a good load of oak just the other day, but now we make sure that the fire doesn't go down to far. It's a little harder getting this wood going. Once it does get going though, it's nice and hot.
Texan, once we get insulation up in our house we will be able to heat it better. We plan on getting another heating source as a back up just in case.
Sandy, boy were they good too!!! You should have come right on over and gotcha a bowl!
Vera, we LOVE our wood stove. Nothing like that good warm heat.
We had a first time mother have one big dead baby as well. We rebred her today and it seems to have gone well. Rabbit noodle soup...yum. We usually roast them and use the meat in various yummy ways. We've got seven 2 week olds and 6 newborns (just last night!!!), and 8 went to freezer camp this past weekend so I'm looking forward to some yummy good food soon!
We got a Fisher stove, exactly like yours, when my oldest dau was around 2 & she's almost 40 now. We had the Papa Bear & there was a smaller one called Mama Bear. Ours came with a screen that fit in the opening that turned it into a fireplace. That stove heated our whole house. I put a fan behind it to blow the warm air. I would blacken it every summer. Over the years & after a divorce, I have no idea what happened to it. I think we paid about 400/500$ for it, back then. Enjoy....
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