Greys & Things

(This photo is from 2004 - I do not have my house decorated for Christmas…yet.) 

This morning the pups and I are waiting for the chimney sweep guy to come out and clean the fireplace so that we can begin using it. 

We mainly heat our house with the fireplace. It is not a normal fireplace.  It has a huge blower and has glass doors that stay shut. It’s made for really heating your home.  It seemed liked a wonderful idea when we were building the house five years ago.  We have ten acres of woods, so we would have plenty.  Five years later, cutting wood is getting very old and so are we.   We rent a log splitter once a year and we split everything in a weekend.  It’s exhausting work and it does not feel good on my bad back.

We’ve made adjustments each year as to how we burn the wood.  In the beginning, we kept the house warm all day long.  Last year, I only started a good fire late in the afternoon and that kept us warm all night.  The pups and I stayed in my office with a space heater.  We save a lot more wood that way.

 I hate to think that in a year or two we may give up heating with wood and just use propane.  Propane is so expensive, but cutting wood is a lot of work.  My husband spends a few hours each weekend bringing the wood up to the screened porch so that we have it for that week.  If you look at the hours we spend cutting and moving wood, the price of propane probably isn’t all that bad.