Stacking Firewood

This is our first year heating our home with wood, and I've got to tell you, it's quite the adventure. Before this year, I'd always romanticized the idea of heating a home with only wood.  The thought of cutting our own wood and providing our own heat seemed very idyllic and homestead-y, which is sort of my goal in life.

To be fair, I do love snuggling up by the fire and reading a good book, or cuddling with Cody and the dogs. It is romantic and ideal in many ways.  It is also a huge amount of work though.  Aside from cutting the wood, which we did only a minimal amount of this year because of how late we moved in, there are many other chores. We clean the inside of the stove each morning before starting a new fire and this requires venturing out into the brisk morning air to dump the ashes into our designated ash bucket, which never sounds fun at 5 o'clock in the morning. 

The biggest chore that we are focusing on now is stacking the wood.  It took us quite some time to stack all of the wood that we had acquired for the winter.  Many, many hours of serious manual labor were put into this endeavor.  We have stacked about seven face chords of wood total (I think).  We don't fully know how much wood we will need for the winter, but we are crossing our fingers that we don't need to find more mid-winter.

Half of our wood went into our hut, which is an insulated building that sits next to our house. It actually has electricity and heat, so it has been used as a "tiny" house before, but we needed a designated wood shed. It's the perfect place to keep the wood dry.

The other half of the wood is stacked on top of pallets on the opposite side of our house.  The stacks that are outside are covered with tarps to help keep the rain and snow off of the logs.  We plan to gradually move more logs into the hut as winter progresses.  We may start moving them sooner though.  Wet wood is a big worry.

We also keep about 40 logs in the house at one time. These logs sit in a small wood closet next to our front door. Typically, we have been hauling these in on Sunday, but I assume this will get more frequent now that the temperatures are dropping drastically. I anticipate that we will have to fill it 2-3 times per week, but at this point it is all guesswork for us.  Lots of guesswork is going into keeping the house heated right now.  I've heard from others who heat exclusively with wood that it takes a while to figure out what is right for your house.  Here's to hoping that we figure it out soon! 

Your turn...Have you ever heated your home with wood?
Currently listening to...American Heartache - The Wood Brothers

Little House in the Big Woods

We moved into a new house! It's been very quiet around the blog lately.  The move is the main reason why that's been happening.  Our new rental house was only about 1000ft from our old rental house (it's literally right around the corner), but it still took a ton of work.  We are finally all moved in though!

Our main reason for moving was because our old house was totally furnished, which is nice, except that you are constantly tip-toeing around other people's stuff.  And when I say furnished, I mean furnished down to the last dish, blanket, towel, and even cleaning supplies.  It was a great house, but we've outgrown having other people's stuff around.

One HUGE bonus to our new house is the wood burning stove! We paid roughly $300/month for heat last winter, which we weren't super keen to do again. This year we are lucky to have an (almost) brand-new stove to heat the house.  We've already started using it, which is awesome because we got our first snowfall this weekend.  Yikes!

Things are still in the "unpacking" phase at our house.  As soon as we get things a little more settled I will post pics of the inside.  It's a very cute house and we are excited to be living in it!

Your turn...What is your favorite thing about your house?

Currently listening to...Hold On - Alabama Shakes