Farm Life Friday: Keeping Warm

I have lived in the city my entire life. Granted the 'city' was first a town of about 1000 in the flat lands of Alberta, followed by a town of 8000 in Illinois, followed by a much larger Metro area for the last 10 years. I've never lived in the country, save for a 3 month stay at my grandfather's house when I was 5. And I have certainly never lived on a farm.

Unfortunatly, this is a rather 'boring farm' by farm standards. No cows, chickens, pigs, goats, horses, or even cats and dogs. Maybe an uninvited mouse or two that I would not like to know about, and there are, of course, the thousand or so ladybugs, but otherwise, nothing exciting. Soybeans, Corn, and us.

Even without a lot of animals to care for, there are still a lot of differences between living here and living in the city. My city friends seem to be rather interested in how I will survive out here in the middle nowhere (or the edge of everywhere as my FIL puts it), so I am going to try and blog about the highlights once a week or so.

Here at our new house we have a wood stove. Now, before you have complete visions of Little House on the Praire, we dont use it for cooking, its only used for heating a portion of our house. I gives off tons of heat, which is a huge blessing in the winter-especially this one!



We had a fireplace at our first apartment together. When we wanted to light a fire in it, we would go to the grocery store, pick up a small 5.00 bundle of wood, and go home to light our decorative fire in the fireplace. It was by no means a money saver. I mean at 5.00 a bundle, that burned for all of about 2 hours, it would take a fortune to heat the house.

That is why, I am so very thankful for a hubby who is willing to go out to our woods and cut wood! He has been cutting about once a week for the last month. Next year, he will try to get the wood cut before winter, but that wasnt an option this year.

A funny story about the first night we used the stove. It can burn very very HOT! But, its adjustable. I didnt know the adjustable part the first night. DH had to work early the next morning so he went off to bed and I kept the kids in the family room so they wouldnt wake him. He had put a huge log on the fire before he went to bed, and when it caught fire, it became miserably hot. 87 degrees was the hottest I saw it.

I was in a tank top and no socks. I had the baby in her diaper and Mustang refused to wear anything but underware. I had 2 windows open and I was sitting right by them. I was hot, frustrated, and a bit mad. Thankfully, it finally got cooler and we were able to think about falling asleep. But, the heat is forever etched into my memory. Thank the Good Lord I found out how to adjust it the next night!

Here are a few pictures of My Man loading the wood pile. Notice the window panes? Yep I took them from inside the warm house :) Maybe next year I'll help. Or maybe not.