Man’s best friends…fire on a cold winter night, and sleeping by that fire. (Press Pros Feature Photos)
At zero degrees I lose big picture focus when it comes to staying warm. Give me a warm fire, the dog sleeping comfortably, and a little something in a glass to make the joints hurt less from carrying wood and ashes.
Unlike many others, I want you to know that I don’t necessarily dislike cold weather.
Of course, 4 below zero is pushing the envelope. And dripping the faucets all night to prevent the pipes from freezing is an inconvenience.
And I love my friends up the road at Schafer Oil Company. They’re the safety net on weeks like this one, supplying the furnace in the basement that’s twenty years old…but with one-third that much actual wear.
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You see, during the worst or the snow, the blowing, and the dropping temperatures on Sunday I was burning wood in the den, making wonderful heat with an old Brunco Stove purchased in 1989 from a company in Covington that was going out of business. It was the biggest model in the store, the demonstrator on the floor, and the last piece of inventory the merchant had because no one else wanted a stove that big.
“You can have it for $300,” he agreed. “Cash money and I’ll deliver and set it up for you. You’ll never need another one, I promise.”
That was thirty six years ago, and in that time I’ve burned at least 200 cords of wood in it. And conservatively speaking, I’ve saved myself $50,000 in heating oil expense. Because on average I burn about 400 gallons of fuel oil, annually, and admittedly it’s the easy way to stay warm. Just turn up the heat.
But I love that old wood-burner and the memories of cutting and splitting firewood with my dad back in the day. And in later years, paying Hayden and Xavier Quinter, from Russia, to cut and deliver truckloads of hickory, ash, and oak each fall. Dad used to claim that burning wood made you warm twice. You sweat when you cut and split it…and sometimes you sweat when you sit by the fire.
It smells good when you burn wood. And I’ve actually learned to discern the difference in smell between burning ash, hickory, and oak. It’s subtle, but they’re all different. Ash burns quick and hot, and makes a lot of ashes. Hickory burns even hotter, burns longer, and leaves about the same amount of ash. And red oak will last through the night and leaves almost no discernible ashes to carry out.
Different wood for different days…piles of hickory (foreground), oak (middle), and ash (background)
So this week I’m burning a lot of wood, and I’m sure a few bridges with those who view burning wood and coal for heat as a detriment to the environment. The same people also support using renewable resources of energy. And wood, of course, is a renewable resource.
But while it’s considered a renewable fuel, the carbon emissions from firewood are actually higher than oil or natural gas per unit of energy. But I really don’t care, because like the heat in a glass that I enjoy with the fire, anything done in moderation is tolerable. There aren’t many comforts in life, so suffer me this one.
The neighbors don’t seem to mind. Phil, next door, has picked up on the smell of chimney smoke and asks, “Hickory or oak today?”
My late neighbor, Bob Shefbuch, would stand in his driveway to get a noseful of that aromatic smoke, even in the dead of winter. And Bob had his own wood burner in his garage workshop. Many a day he’d invite more over to enjoy his firewood de jour.
“I’m burning locust and hedge apple today,” he’d beam. “Nothing beats a good fire.”
Nor is there anything more intoxicating than sitting, or sleeping, by a wood fire. There are nights – many nights – when sleeping in the chair by the fire is far more restful than wrestling with an electric blanket in the bed upstairs. Several years ago I bought the biggest, deepest sofa that Westrich Furniture had on their showroom floor for the explicit purpose of sleeping by that fire on a zero night. The aroma, the crackling, and the flickering flame is better medicine for insomnia than anything that Mike Huckabee sells.
Publisher Sonny Fulks writes OHSAA and Ohio State sports for Press Pros Magazine.com.
Added benefits? I’ve cooked on the top of that stove during power outages. I’ve dried wet clothes. And wood ash is a wonderful supplement for growing certain vegetables if you spread them on the garden…asparagus, especially. It acts as a potassium-rich fertilizer, and increases soil alkalinity to an ideal, less-acidic range. It boosts potassium (potash), calcium, and magnesium, promoting strong stalk growth in asparagus. And, it’s natural.
Don’t get me wrong, the oil furnace in the basement will kick on this week, but it won’t stay on once I regenerate the wood stove in the morning, and before I go to bed at night.
And I’ll easily burn a half cord of wood this week in the zero temperatures ($100). But when heating oil was really expensive a few years ago, it didn’t take much to burn 400 gallons a month if you didn’t have wood. And anyway you figure it that’s twice, or three times. the cost of having a fire in the stove.
As a closing statement to those who hug trees and worry about the environment, it’s fine to love them while they’re standing. I do my loving after they’ve fallen down, they’re cut and split, and providing mankind the kind of dominion over the earth’s resources that it speaks about in Genesis. And with that I rest. comfortably.
By the fire, of course.
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