Wood stove criteria still a burning issue

Some of us take two steps forward and three back.

That’s what I concluded the other day while stacking wood in the shed up there on a ledge at the end of the woods road. The shed hasn’t always been there; a long time ago it was located in a patch of trees a lot closer to the side of house where the wood box is situated. The box holds about a day’s worth of wood if layered properly and can be accessed from a small, thick door inside, within easy reach of the wood stove.

Although that made perfect sense for many years – rolling the wheelbarrow filled with wood the short snow-covered distance (about 20 feet and slightly downhill) from the shed to the box – we cleared the patch of trees, moved the wood shed farther away and erected a heavy playground set for the grandkids. That’s what is called having a senior moment.

Now, we’re wondering what in tarnation we did, as we’re rolling the wheelbarrow filled with wood 60 feet from the shed to the box, around a flower bed, ducking under the round television dish installed too low.

Perhaps, all of us go through these progressions – regressions are more like it – when we change our ideas like a chameleon lizard changes color.

For nearly 25 years, we have heated with wood: seven cords to be exact, cut in 2-foot lengths to cram – 60 pounds at a time – into our airtight Papa Bear Fisher, one of the homeliest but warmest stoves around. At that time, fuel oil was so cheap other neighbors were abandoning their wood stoves while we were seasoning ours.

The Fisher hadn’t been our first attempt at wood stove heating; the first failed miserably when we installed a minuscule, though charming, schoolhouse stove purchased in Mars Hill in 1979. We must have been from Mars, thinking we could heat this rambling house with a stove no larger than a black Lab.

Out went the metalbestos pipe, down came the block chimney, out went the schoolhouse stove. Up came the lined brick chimney, in came the Fisher with a little help from at least half the town’s population.

Thus, we rested ever after. Until about three years ago when we modernized our home by installing regular heat: a boiler with trickling hot water popping in the baseboards, sounding like bb guns but, for once, eliminating chilly spots in secret corners.

Life was luxurious, so much that we were charmed into buying an enamel fireplace stove similar to a Franklin, for viewing and coziness and yule logs burning. Another senior moment.

Now that it has dawned on us fuel costs have more than doubled since 1997 when we were happily roasting with our familiar Fisher, we’ve gone three steps back to another wood stove.

Three steps forward is really the case, moving to a soapstone-type version we yearned for 25 years ago.

Of course, by now, seasoned, split wood is running $225 a cord. And, the wood shed is so far away that even the principal wouldn’t take me out to it for misbehaving in class.