Enjoying The New Stove

On the day of completion

The break-in period was quick. The stove puts out some nice heat. I will be fine tuning it's performance by putting gaskets on the doors, so that I can restrict the airflow a bit more and make the fire burn slower in the night.  Right now, the rule is that if you get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, you go throw a couple of logs in.


The last post had pics from just after completion, and Twyla hadn't really had a chance to put her decorating skills to work yet.  This morning she had it looking better, and I took the time to paint the ash bucket to match; that is, after diligently scraping the labels off.

The room as of today

Of course, there is no guarantee that anything movable is going to stay in the same place for the whole winter, er, the month, er, a week or two, er, even a day.  You just never know with Twyla.  I love how the place looks right now, though.  I would like to have a cast iron tea kettle instead of the white porcelain on steel version in the pic, but it will happen when it happens.


It wasn't cold enough this morning to justify making a really hot fire in the stove.  It got up to 72° F and we really don't want it any warmer than that.  I had to cook my breakfast potatoes on the regular propane stove because it was only hot enough to get the water in the kettle to about 160° F.  That would be great for heating some soup or for sweating some onions or "holy trinity," but it's just not hot enough for browning diced potatoes.

The view from the back

I can imagine that when January and Febu-Ugly get here and the temperature is below 18° F and there is a blanket of white outside, we will be sitting there with hot apple cider or chocolate with marshmallows or tea.  Maybe I'll be strumming my guitar and we will sing old hymns or folk songs. Maybe I'll read the Tanakh in Hebrew out loud to Twyla and see how much of it she recognizes.  Whatever it is that we do, it will be peaceful in a way that very few people ever experience.  Twyla has some other photo's posted over on her blog, so make sure you go over there and check it out.


In other news, the six orphan chicks moved to their new "digs" out in the front yard near the azaleas. Digs is an appropriate word, since you wouldn't believe how much chickens can dig with all that scratching they do.  They still look kind of small in that big run with the pet carrier, but in another month the place will seem small.  By then I should have the big coup done.

Moxie wants to find a way in

They immediately took to the roosting stick that I stuck in the cage.  Cogburn and Blackburn immediately began displaying even more typical rooster behavior.  Big flapping and rushing at the other chicks as if to herd them, or just show them who's boss.  Twyla now seems to think that a third one of the chicks is also a rooster.  I don't know, but I wouldn't bet against her.  It's the one that has suddenly come out with these pretty chestnut brown feathers speckled with black.  I will have to remember to take a close up for this blog in the near future.  It really does fascinate me how quickly the coloring of the feathers change from day to day.

Cogburn roosting

I cut an awful lot of firewood today and prepared another place for storing it.  Completely transferred a large compost bin to another area over under some trees behind the shed and further cleared the area where the big coup is going to go.

There is so much more to do.