Wednesday, March 06, 2013

The Heart of our Home

This time of year, our KOZI wood burning stove is the heart of our home. It came with the cabin and has been a steadfast friend ever since. With regular stovepipe cleaning, it keeps the fire roaring, or low and slow.

A woodstove must have wood. For us, that's fairly simple. During high water, the wood floats right to our front porch. All we have to do is scoop it up, cut it up (sometimes) and let it dry. When we are gathering wood throughout the summer, we are dreaming of the cozy fires it will bring during long winter nights.

Storing wood on our cabin's float is problematic. We want it close, but not weighing down the foundation of our cabin. Our floating woodshed serves this purpose well. For those really rainy and windy nights, we have our small indoor wood shelf (click here for directions) that holds about 4-5 days worth of really dry wood. It takes up a little space in our "guest room," but no one seems to complain.

Because we gather wood from debris floating on the lake, it comes in all sizes. When it's large, it must be cut and split. For twelve years we completed that task using a chain saw and ax. We still use the chainsaw to cut the pieces into stove lengths, but for Christmas I got an electric log splitter. What a wonderful device for both of us to use.



In case you missed the video, here it is. Watch out for your fingers!

Do you use a woodstove? Do you use it for heating, cooking, or anything else. I'd love to hear your experiences. -- Margy

10 comments:

  1. Anonymous3:14 PM

    Back when the kids were growing up we had lots of birthdays the first of the year,My oldest sons' was last on the 19th 0f January. we had wood stove for heat, and I ask him what kind of cake he wanted he said spagetti so I so I put a big pot of sauce on the wood stove and let it simmer all day. It was the bests sauce we ever had.~Betty

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  2. There was an old pot-belly stove in our cabin that kept us warm when we spent time there. They're such fun.

    Leslie
    abcw team

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  3. I'm almost NEVER too warm in the winter!
    ROG, ABC Wednesday team

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  4. Great choice for H!
    What a great way to use those drifting logs.
    We had a woodstove in our old century home - our kitchen was always hot - but the rest of the house wasn't quite as warm.

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  5. That is a very nice machine to cut wood.

    Haghpat Monastery, Armenia

    Catching up with letter H entries.
    Rose, ABC Wednesday Team

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  6. Hey hey hey, wait a minute...did you say the wood floats right up to your cabin and you just scoop it up? Sometimes having to chop it? I like the sound of this system...I wish there was a way I could use it at our cabin, LOL!

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  7. We use a wood stove as our main source of heat too. At bob's house that is. While we use weathered wood from the property sometime Bob has to fell some trees. That is what he is doing now--down go the trees for next years heat. MB

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  8. There is something comforting about wood heat that you don't get with any other kind of heat,
    An Arkies Musings

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  9. We have a wood insert. I love it. I have a chain saw, but don't know how to use it. I also have a log splitter. ditto. Son-i-law tried it and it didn't work on our elms, too hard. I've kept our heating costs down this winter. Hubby cannot lift...with his back.
    I will watch your video!

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  10. Thanks everyone for visiting and commenting on my ABC Wednesday post. I loved hearing your wood stove stories. - Margy

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We welcome your comments and questions. - Wayne and Margy