Myownpathfinder: Firefire

It is the season when the heat has left us and gone south, so we have to just make our own. I mentioned earlier that a former occupant of the house left us a wood stove which is one of the most important features in the house. It has been in everyday use since September when the cold started pinching our toes, and does a really good job heating up the kitchen/living room space where we spend most of our time.

Every morning we come downstairs, the first job is to light the fire, obviously. So far, we haven't used the radiators at all since it is a bit costly way of heating. We just try to survive as long as possible with the fire. Let's see how that line of thinking works in January!

So, in the stove goes some dried up broom branches (excellent for lighting a fire), newspaper, little sticks, middle sized sticks and some logs. And in no time at all we'll have a warm and cosy room. Though that doesn't stop me having my customary four layers of clothes on and a blanket around the shoulders for good measure. Strange behaviour for a Finn, one might think, but I like it to be warm inside since I mostly read, knit or sit in front of a computer and so feel the cold more easily. When outside, I don't really care how cold it gets, for I'll be walking and moving all the time and that keeps me warm.

This stove is very versatile; once we even cooked a pizza in the upper part of it and it worked out just fine. Good to know that in case of a failure of electrical supply, we will not go hungry and we'll have something warm to line our stomachs with. We've prepared also by lining our store cupboards with food items in case we can't get to the shops for few days. The former occupant told us that last winter she was stuck in the house for two days when the snow blocked the roads and nobody cleared them. Alaskan outbacks come to mind...Maybe I should buy skis after all.

So far, no great disasters but the wood is always on my mind. We have been collecting smaller pieces of wood and sticks all summer and autumn and they need working and ranging. One of my favourite things is to saw them into smaller bits, there's just something very relaxing and comforting in that. I've tried using the chainsaw too with the bigger logs but I much prefer the 'quiet', good old wood saw. Much more meditative and far less dangerous.

We ordered another lorryload of logs from our trusty logman way back in October, to see us through till christmas, if possible. We'll see. He came finally almost two hours late. Kind of what is to be expected in these parts, but we phoned him anyway to check what was keeping him and if he would arrive at all. He did, eventually, and explained through gritted teeth that he'd just had an unexpected rendez-vous with the police who deemed his trailer tires rather abimé, and hence parted him of pretty much equal sum of money that he would later get from us for his pile of logs. So he gained next to nothing from the trip to this neck of woods, and with one last black look at the aforementioned tires, he left us to our pile of logs.

The wood we got was semi-dry so we needeg to get some of it inside for final drying. I made a nice, neat pile on the right side of the stove, the other side being full already with the dry stuff.

All autumn it has been raining quite a lot but one day we got more than our fair share and by the afternoon even the road was flooding. And notice the neighbour's garden on the backround, it's a veritable river! Luckily we are quite high up so the chances of the house getting flooded are pretty slim. There are lots of areas in France that are not so lucky and the frequency of floods and other natural disasters is rather worrying.

Indeed we are very lucky to be able to warm up our toes in front of a good fire. Even Lili, the Cat, knows it and she often finds the best places to curl up for a wee snooze...