In Defense of Wood Heat

 

Or, I might have a firewood problem…

Tonight, my new woodshed is full of firewood - a combination of white oak from my neighbor’s property, long-dead black oak from my own property, tamarack pine and incense cedar from the Stanislaus National Forest, and Ponderosa Pine from my sawmill. About four cords, in all. A full woodshed, for me, is the equivalent of a barn full of hay going into winter.

Earlier this week, my sister asked me what I was doing this weekend. “Finishing filling my woodshed,” I told her. “Impressive,” she texted back. I realized that I’m becoming a bit like the Norwegian bachelor farmers of Garrison Keillor’s stories - a loner with practical obsessions. A full woodshed, a full pantry, and a full freezer make me happy!

In late September, I received an email from my propane supplier - over a 12-month period, I hadn’t used enough propane to justify regular deliveries. I would now be on “will-call” - I’d need to check my tank and call them when I was getting low. Since my furnace is the only thing I run on propane, I took this as an accomplishment! I mostly heated my house last winter with a new Lopi woodstove. And firewood I cut myself.

Enough bragging, though - a little personal history is in order. Sami and I started heating our home with wood as soon as we bought our own place in Penryn, in 1994. In the early years of our marriage, we cut firewood at the ranches of our friends (I remember splitting huge valley oak rounds at Marden Wilber’s ranch in Clements, with his homemade splitter). For softwood kindling, I cut what was available - mostly foothill grey pine (what I grew up calling bull pine). And I split it by hand. I was much stronger and more persistent in my younger days!

When we bought our home in Auburn, the sellers had replaced their woodstove with a natural gas “woodstove” - probably a selling point for most prospective buyers. We immediately replaced it with a new woodstove. Eventually, our natural gas furnace fell into such disrepair through lack of use that we heated entirely with wood. The house was so poorly insulated that if we were gone more than two days during the winter, the inside temperature would dip into the low 40s by the time we returned.

One of the first improvements I made to my new place in Mountain Ranch last year was the installation of a new woodstove - the lack of wood heat was one of the few things I didn’t like about the house when I first saw it. And even though this place has a furnace, I mostly heated it with the wood I cut last fall and winter. I will admit, though, that leaving the furnace set at 57F when I traveled last winter felt like a welcome luxury!

Yesterday, I had a chimney sweep out to make sure I was ready for the coming winter. He found very little creosote in my stovepipe! The combination of seasoned oak and dry cedar and tamarack seemed to be perfect. I’m interested to see what the addition of pitchier pine from my sawmill waste will do, but I think my new stove works pretty well. I’m hopeful that its state-of-the-art combustion technology means it doesn’t put out much in the way of particulate matter.

A brief digression. Another of my favorite autumn activities is deer hunting. I’ve been heating my home with wood far longer than I’ve hunted; I didn’t get my first deer until I was in my forties. Maybe that’s the reason, but I have to admit I’d sooner give up my deer rifle (and learn to bow-hunt) than give up my woodstove! Modern wood stoves seem to be very clean burning.

The old idiom that wood heat heats you twice is accurate. Even with my fossil-fuel powered chainsaw and wood splitter, making firewood is physical work! But people heated with wood long before 2-stroke and 4-stroke engines were a thing - I’d need to be in much better shape, but I know I could heat my place with wood even without gasoline!

My two favorite authors have written far more eloquently than I about the benefits of wood heat. Montanan Ivan Doig wrote that a woodstove was the only way to heat the rivets of your Levi’s. I think of this every time I come in from a cold day’s work and stand in front of my woodstove. A floor vent just doesn’t perform in the same way. And Kentuckian Wendell Berry wrote that he’d rather know how to build a fire than know how a thermostat works. This thought sustains me whenever I come home to a cold winter house.

And so in this second autumn in my new place, I’m finding that I thoroughly enjoy cutting, splitting, and stacking firewood. Still - even in my late fifties. I’m finding that having a woodshed that is sized (I hope!) to contain a winter’s worth of firewood gives me a measure of enjoyment. And a goal. And I’m looking forward to starting my winter mornings with a trip outside to gather wood from the wood box on my porch. To coming in from chores and heating my backside in front of the woodstove. To turning of the lights in the living room and falling asleep to the glow of my woodstove.

And knowing that I had something to do with making it all possible.