Cold Days Of January

This is Patches!

The last few days have gotten cold again so I am busy trying to stay warm. We have two wood stoves in our house. One is a big Alasksa wood heating stove. It is a big sheet metal stove, with two big cooking surfaces on it. I love it. I heat all my water on that stove and since it's right next to my bathroom, it's pretty easy to carry the water to the bath tub. Some day, we will have the gravity fed water system in, maybe this coming summer. But for now this is what we use and I am quite happy with it.

Our other wood stove is a Jewel wood cookstove, made by The Detroit Stove Company. It is black cast iron and has Zinc fancy work on it. It is old and has some cracks and broken spots on it. But I am able to cook and bake with it. In fact, I cook my Thanksgiving dinner on it every year, and it comes out looking like the dinners you see in the pictures. I cook the best meals on that stove! My breakfasts can't be beat!

Since my system is down right now, (I am working off my battery, and right now I am charging my computer battery off the little bit of power that I can get from the sun today) I am trying to do little bits of work, as I can. I think we are going to plan on purchasing a wind turbine this year. I wanted to add more solar panels, but think the wind turbine would be a good addition for the winter months, when we do not get much sun. Our system keeps changing it's design as we live with it and see what we need.