Wood Heat and Company

There is a not so romantic side of heating with only wood. It's hard to regulate the temperature. It might be 10 degrees outside but with a good roaring fire, it might be 90 in the house, time for shorts. Or you could be just getting the stove going or letting it die down a bit and then its time to put on your coat in the house. If you happen to be having company, its a bit hard to tell them how to dress for such extremes.

My children are used to it, they know to come to mom and dads with layers on. Last night was no exception. For a while we had the babies on the floor in summer attire. For a while they were wrapped in blankets ! What happens is the house is cold, so you build a good fire, after a bit that fire warms the room up to pleasant, it feels so nice you add another log, and maybe another one after that, soon you start to feel something similar to a hot flash, you might even sweat, those two innocent looking logs you added a bit ago are now doing an amazing job at raising the temperature of the room. You escape to the far end of the house to cool off or on occasion you open a window and let some cold air IN. I remember one time in Oregon, it was 4 outside, pretty cold, our well froze up and we needed water for baths so we filled a tub with snow and melted it next to the wood stove. We needed a good size fire for that and there was a cold wind seeping in the tiniest cracks of the house, but this good size fire soon heated the house to more than cozy, it was down right hot in the house, the snow melted in the tub quite nicely.

I had plenty of water for dishes and a bath or two. We were sitting in the house with windows open when it was 4 degrees out. Of course the windows didn't stay open very long, but still it was rather strange looking to anyone that didn't heat with wood !

This morning I have one of those cozy fires in the stove. Not too hot, just right for sitting near and enjoying a big mug of coffee, Wolfgang Perty singing Christmas songs in German to me from the stereo. Pretty much a perfect morning.

Listen to a bit of my morning music Wolfgang Petry Freude