Simple Pleasure of Heating With Wood

Having used wood heat for part of my childhood and most of my adult life, I find that no other kind of heat source has what we might call “character”. Without a doubt all other common heating systems are ‘convenient’ when compared to wood. So ’convenient’ in fact, that they are taken for granted and forgotten about, that is until it is time to pay for the “fill up” whether it be fuel oil, propane or even electric.

For many years we heated our home with a combination of heating oil and wood. That had a great benefit, for if we were not at home to keep the fire up, the furnace kept the house at a reasonable temperature. But at that time heating oil was relatively cheap compared to now. I remember nearly having “the big one” when I had to pay over a dollar a gallon for it. We most often got by with two 250 gallon tanks that we would fill in August, as that was usually the cheapest time of year to buy heating oil.

Then a little over 10 years ago we moved to the farm. No furnace, just wood with a couple small electric back up heaters, plus a vent-less propane heater in the bathroom for quick heat when bathing. That we run from 100# tanks, one most often lasts the winter, unless it is especially cold.

Our heat source is wood. Two stoves, one in the middle of the house which is the main stove, plus a small stove in the kitchen that we use on cloudy days or really cold weather. This year we have had the pleasure of using, for the first time, a Soapstone stove. These stoves are build with cut soapstone, each square being 1¼” thick, all held together with a cast iron frame. They are also the most expensive free standing woodstove I know of, apart from the outdoor stove furnaces.

Those who know my wife will guess where she found this stove, at a garage sale of course. That is the only way we could afford, or justify the cost of one of these stoves. We got it in a good used condition for less than a third of the cost of a new one. Having used it this winter I can safely say that the cost of a new one would not be too much, as long as one can afford it. They are a marvelous heating unit! Naturally, they are heavy stoves by their very nature of being build from solid stone and cast iron. Ours weighs something over 500#. That is part of the secret to their great usefulness. The mass of stone once heated will hold heat for many hours after the fire has gone cold. I think the manufactures claim is 14 hours, in our experience, I have every reason to belief that this is close to the truth. Certainly when we wake up in the morning, even if the fire is long out, the stove is still very warm to the touch.

But there is more charm to wood heat than simply the stove that the wood is burned in. It is not always a lot cheaper. If one must purchase all their wood from a firewood dealer, I doubt that they would save any money at all. We use a mixture of purchased slab wood that we buy in 8’ bundles and must cut with a chainsaw and dry during the summer, plus we take out fallen or lightening struck trees from our own woodlot. This is our greatest cost saving item for heat, however it is also ’labor intensive’. I try to get the trees down and cut to 9’ lengths in the spring before the mosquitoes hatch and also before the sap gets up in the tree. They will dry much better and burn hotter if harvested when the sap is down in the fall, winter or early spring.

Then we have to cut the logs into 18” pieces and split them on the wood splitter. I used to split wood with a splitting maul, but after a couple hernia surgeries, back surgery and other physical problems, those days are over. We now use a good gas powered wood splitter.

As heat, wood has warmed and comforted millions of common people for as long as we have been on this globe. In nearly all countries of the world, wood has, at least in the past, been as necessary to survival as food and water. I like doing things in a way that I know my remote ancestors also did. I certainly got the better end of the stick, when it comes to the technology used to harvest firewood. The axe was the traditional method going back to biblical times. Even the crosscut saw is a relatively late invention in its use for felling trees, in this country it was late in the 19^th century when the narrow crosscut design began to be used for felling, prior to the invention of a narrow blade the trees were chopped down with axes, then bucked up (cut to length) with a wide blade crosscut saw.

When you think of the pioneers having to mostly use an axe to gather firewood, no wonder we read about them building fire places that were up to 6 feet wide. Stories are told, which I have no reason to doubt, that some pioneers would drag a 6’ piece of log into their dirt floor cabin with a horse and then roll it into the fireplace! I am thinking that log would burn for awhile, if you could keep it burning. For wood does not dry very well in large log form, it needs to be split to dry properly.

As to the details of using wood as heat, it is usually a “learning experience” for the first few years. One will quickly realize that the specie and quality of your firewood will make a considerable difference in your comfort. Some wood, cotton wood for example, or Norway pine, will nearly put your fire out if at all green. Cotton wood, which thrives in western MN and ND and I am sure many other places, when freshly cut is will latterly drip water, it has a very high content of moisture. Then if it is well dried it will give off fair heat, but like many other soft textured woods, it will burn up very fast, almost like paper.


The best woods to use for firewood are the harder dense hardwoods. Hickory being one of the best, but that does not grow in central or northern MN. Our most common good wood is either white oak or red oak, followed by birch and ash. We do have in places and our farm is one of them, a specie of ironwood that rivals hickory when it comes to heat production, but they generally do no grow very big before they die. We have a few that are around 8 or 10” at the stump and still living, these are ‘huge’ for an ironwood tree. There is another specie of ironwood which has a different bark and purple wood on the inside, but that is properly called ‘hornbeam’; of course, the names of some of these trees are dependent upon the “authority” you talk to. Hornbeam is more of a ‘shrub’ and does not get very big at all that I have ever seen and generally rots before it even falls over.

Another thing about wood heat that should always be stressed when speaking of the subject, is safety. Many of houses burn to the ground yearly from wood heat. There are lots of causes, some just plain carelessness and others are sometimes things hard to control. Other than being careful in general, the best policy is to keep you chimney cleaned of creosote buildup. A chimney fire is a dangerous situation and has been responsible for a lot of fires. What happens is that by having greenish wood or keeping a low fire the heat is not enough to burn the wood clean, thus as the by products go up the chimney they cool and cling to the inside of the tiles or pipe, depending on the kind of chimney one has.

We make a habit of cleaning our chimney with a stiff chimney brush several times during the winter and always in the spring and fall, plus cleaning the stove pipes more often than that. It is in the stove pipe that many chimney fires get started and then set the creosote in the chimney itself on fire. By making certain creosote is not building up in the pipes is one way to help prevent a chimney fire. That said, it is still always a risk when one must take in heating with wood. That is why insurance companies hate woodstoves in houses. I understand their concern. But on the same hand I am willing to pay for the extra risk I cause them in order to heat my home the way I want.

The old saying that “firewood will heat you twice” is not quite accurate, in my experience. Certainly not the way we put up the wood. If we speak of trees that we take from our own woods. First, no matter how you do it, you are going to get warmed up running a chainsaw to drop the tree or if it is downed by the wind, cut it to lengths than can be gotten out with a tractor. Second, then you must cut it to 18” firewood length. Third, you split the wood and stack it on pallets that can be handled with the forks on a tractor. This is so it can be set out in the open air to get the benefit of the wind and sun to dry good before putting it into a shed for winter. That is the ‘fourth’ handling of each piece of wood. Fifth, you move the wood from the woodshed to the woodstove, usually with a stop by the wood box on the closed in porch before it actually gets to the stove and ‘makes heat’. By my count that wood will warm you anywhere from 5 to 6 times! It surely is more than twice.

On a cold snowy winter evening, it is a pleasure to sit before a glass door of a good woodstove, watching the fire while sipping on a cup of hot tea and reading a good book. When you choose to live in the country away from any semblance of city or town life, nor TV, the simple joy of a warm woodstove is something that I would not want to give up. Nor would I trade places with any of the ‘rich and famous’, who, though they may be able to afford a grand fireplace with ‘easy bought wood’, it is nearly assured that they cannot appreciate or enjoy their fire more than I do. For I am reaping the direct reward for my own labor, and that, without the cares of worries of a rich man.

This is a quote from William J. Dawson in “The Quest of the Simple Life”, published in 1907, it hit’s the point when we speak of ‘simple living’;

    “It would seem that the anxieties of getting money only beget the more 
      torturing anxiety of how to keep it.”

While I set by my woodstove this evening, I won’t be bothered by such ‘anxiety’.

Dreaming of a Brown Christmas

We have lived in MN since 1987 and it has not happened yet, but I am hopeing for a “brown Christmas”. Not ‘just because’ I am a ‘scrooge’ when it comes to holidays, but I am very happy with a dry frozen ground. Although we did get a light covering of slushy snow last night, that should evaporate in a few days.
I can’t help but remember what the “wooly worm” told me back in the fall. Kind of hate to bring up that “old wife’s tale”, but according to the legend, so far he is still right. According to his coloring we were to have a mild first part of winter, but then a nasty spring. It I very rare that we make it to mid-December and have not even had a decent snow yet in our part of the state. I think the twin cities have had more snow than we have. We have only had a couple dustings at our location. In fact we are in a fall drought and it was only yesterday that we had enough moisture to risk burning some brush piles that needed the torch.

One mild winter we did make it to Dec. 23 before getting snow that made for a white Christmas, but that is as close as we have come. At this point we have had such a mild fall that it is hard to think of complaining about any bad weather. Compared to what is “normal”, if there is any such thing, we have been in extreme ‘high cotton’ this year, so far. Only one day did we work outdoors that was even mildly uncomfortable and that was mainly due to a roaring wind, more than the actual temperature. I think we have only had a night or two that reached zero. We have seen much colder weather than that in early November, so we are a month past due to begin with.

After seeing many winters that can only be described as “hard”, it has been a great blessing to have had this mild year. The only thing that would have made it better, would have been to know this in October! We surely could have put off a lot of work that we rushed to get done before the snows hit, or at least have taken our good old time at preparing for them. Even the firewood pile still looks healthy, compared to what it generally does this time of year.
While we bask in the nice weather it is practically certain that soon we will forget all about this and be wishing for spring. It is remarkable how the human mind works. It will only take about a week of sub-zero weather to make us think we have been cold “forever”, especially if it hits us quickly as it is likely too this year. It takes a few weeks of cold for the body to adjust to the ideal and get the blood flowing properly. This year we have not had enough cold for our body to even realize it needs to ‘adjust’. We had a few days of cold a week or so ago and my body went into protest, I could not stay warm. That is why it is better if we get cold and just stay cold, once you endure a few days of it, you are acclimated and are able to go about your normal activities with very little attention paid to the temperature.

Speaking of staying warm. We heat with wood. That means at night, either someone gets up to put wood on the fire or the house is rather chilly by morning. It used to not be a problem, either me or my wife would be up and feed the fire. Somehow as we have aged, neither of us want to make the trip down the stairs to feed the fire, consequently it is in the 50’s when we get up in the morning. This is normal life for people in our part of the country who heat with wood, no big deal. I know plenty of people who prefer to keep their house cold most all the time, I just don’t happen to be one of them. Since middle age has crept up on me, I stay cold most of the year! The joke has been that “old men” in MN never shed their long underwear, expect maybe for the month of July. That used to be funny, but not anymore, I can quickly see that time approaching for me. I have to endure a lot of abuse from “Nordic types” on account of this too, but it make no difference, if I am cold, I’m cold.

Last week my wife bought me an electric blanket. Now that is a luxury I wonder how I have lived 50 some years without! My image of an electric blanket was the style that was common years ago. I remember seeing such a thing and it seemed heavy and stiff. I wondered how it could have been comfortable to sleep under. But the ones on the market now are a lightweight fleece type that is soft and hardly more bulky than a sheet. This blanket covering a light quilt makes my night much more comfortable, I don’t care how cold the house gets! Oh yes, our daughter has one too, so no one has to be cold during the night, unless the power goes off, then I can either get up and put wood on the fire or get my heavy wool quilt back out.

What this has to do with a “brown Christmas” I have no ideal, but such are the ramblings that goes on in “Ernie’s World”.