A recent post in Survival Blog got me thinking of home.
I find splitting wood and making fires to be the two best domestic chores. For me there’s nothing like a clean split on a white oak log, with the wonderful smell of the fresh wood and an ever-increasing pile beside you. It’s entirely satisfying work; at the end you can see what you did that day.
One of the first significant mods I made to the house was a good quality wood-burning insert for the fireplace. When we get that thing going it’ll heat most of the downstairs. The door on the insert lets us stoke it up and go to bed when we feel like it, instead of waiting for it to die down in order to close the damper. Many a time I’ve come down in the morning to find still-glowing embers in the box from the night before, and the iron still warm to the touch. The only thing I’d do different would be to put in a soapstone heater, but that would have to have gone in from the ground up. Maybe one day.
A fire in the fireplace, children asleep in bed, cats asleep in front of the fire, thoughts of a good hunt fresh in the mind, and a mug of beer in hand. The best of all worlds.
