Wood Stove Cleaning and Blackening Day #1

Feeling a bit like Cinderella, I set to the task of getting the wood stove ready for fall and winter. I always like to give it a good blackening in the fall, and make it all shiny and new looking. The blackening part isn't so bad as long as you wear gloves, otherwise you have black hands for quite some time.
But cleaning out the inside of the stove is the messy part. I purposely wore my long black denim skirt today, it won't show the soot. Now my arms are covered with soot but thankfully I did manage to keep my face from being covered in black smudges.
First I shovel the old ashes out into the coal hod, then take a small hand broom and get the corners of the stove swept out, by this time, fine ash is flying all around the room and the furniture looks like Mt St Helens has erupted and spread ash all over my house. Next step is to plug in the vacuum cleaner and vacuum out the rest of the fine ash left in the stove. Its not a fun job. You get messy, the room fills with ash from stirring it up so much and you know as soon as you clean it all up, it will get cold and you will have to build a fire and all the evidence of your hard work is gone.
That done, I clean the glass on the door and polish the brass around the door. Things are starting to look pretty good. Now for the messy messy stuff. The stove black calls for work gloves. That stuff makes a real mess on your hands. I squeeze a bit out, rub it in with a soft cloth and keep rubbing till a soft patina covers the stove. It looks so good, but then you notice that fine ash that has been floating around, starts to settle on the stove top. Oh well, tomorrow I will dust if off after all that ash has settled some. Stove all clean. One more step closer to having things ready for cold. The wood stove is the only heat we use. We have two gas stoves but never use them.
Time to go polish up the tea kettle and the cooking ring that I set my cast iron pots on when I cook with the woodstove.
Life is good, hard work keeps me singing a happy tune.
Now to bag up all those weeds I pulled up this morning. Some have gone to seed so won't put them in the big compost pile, it never gets hot enough to kill the seeds so wouldn't want good soil with all weed seeds in it. Will toss that stuff in a garbage bag for now and let it heat up and kill the seeds that way.
Planting time is right around the corner and we are anxious to get things in the ground for our fall and winter garden.

Ready to start the job

Sweeping out the stove

A shovel full of ashes