Feeding the monster

The idea and premise is that heating with wood is a good thing; yes it is a renewable source of fuel, yes it does work and the thing is so do you...
I am fortunate that I can get wood, occassionaly, from a local pallet factory, the bits and pieces that are of no use to them. This is inexpensive and it comes by the dump truck load. The company when it has a truck load and gets to my name brings a dump truck to my farm and the man dumps the load of wood in one big pile. You would think that was a good thing right? Wellllll yes and no. There is wet wood, dry wood, wood to big for the stoves and one shouldn't leave it out in the open as it will get wet in the rain and snow; so what to do?

I and who ever I can con into helping has to sort the wood into piles tote, carry, lug, drag, lift groan, sweat and cuss this into stacks that can be covered with something like tarps to keep the rain off the wood. Then the daily feeding and pleading with the two iron monsters to keep enough heat in them to keep enough heat in me to do it over and over again. You see I heat and cook with wood, I also heat my wash water on the kitchen wood stove. So the tank has to filled by hand and is by a large kettle. Remembering to keep the tank on the kitchen stove filled is important as it takes a long time to heat the water if it should run dry; I might be slow but I do learn, from now on one pot or kettle out one pot or kettle in.

The kitchen stove requires regular feeding as it has a small fire box, if I am lucky I can get the fire to last a couple of hours; if not I have to start over making another fire again so the idea is not to let the fire go out. The gathering room stove is a huge rectangle boxy thing that can hold a lot of wood and I can get three four hours out of it; because I haven't learned to operate it well yet. So, there is this continual padding back and forth on cold days between the stove the wood stack inside and the wood stack outside and working outside splitting wood and lugging it inside to keep the house warm and .... you get the picture even on a good day or night there is something to do. I am learning, slowly, but I am learning how to do all this and get other things done also.

Yes, feeding the monster keeps you busy :) P.S. Cats are having the time of their life hunting the little mice; no comment from the mice....

Urban Cats 4, Farm mice 1

Well things are going okay at the farm so far. The pets are settling in and the city cats are learning what fun it is to catch them little mice. The dogs are having a ball running about and learning about the farm.

The unpacking is about done still have a few things I just don't know what to do with-something will have to go. I have a lot more useless clothing that will have to find a new home and a few bits and pieces of furniture that will will also find a new home.

The telephone situation is still up in the air-I have been led to believe that it would be put in on January 9th and it didn't show up. Today I cornered a man in a telephone truck and he checked on the problem and now it is scheduled for the 17th. We shall see. Seems that the neighbor next door wouldn't let them put a new pole in on her property to bring a line over to mine. So, the telephone company called the electric company and as the electric company has a right of way through her property and they will put in a pole so the telephone company can use their right of way. The way I see it more companies more ways for things to be messed up. This I think will be a saga.

Otherwise things are going along at a much slower pace and because there is no phone or cell phone available things are very very quiet at the farm. For access to the world wide web I use the local library. So that limits my options also. My life has changed pace quite a bit, from rush rush do it now, right now, to well sure we'll get her done-soon enough :)

Got to love this country life :))