Heat

I really enjoy our wood stove. I like the feel of the heat, the white noise if the blower, the fact that I'm heating my house burning someone else's trash that would get burned whether it were in a place where it's heat would benefit me or not. I'm lying on the couch by the stove now, soaking in the warm, slightly smoky ambiance.

We buy our wood from an outfit that builds log homes. We buy their scrap, not the nifty logs that are so popular. We can get a winter's worth of wood for about $50. It doesn't completely replace our gas furnace, but it does mean the furnace runs a lot less.

Another benefit: I never have to worry about identity theft with a wood stove. Nor do I have to buy a shredder. Every February, after the taxes are done, I go through our filing cabinet and discard the old bills and other paperwork we no longer need and spend the next month shoving it all into the stove. Up the chimney it goes.

And the ash, we throw into the garden. Over the past few years, we've made the soil better, adding this extra matter to the clay in the garden. That --and the turkey manure -- I'm convinced gave us a bumper tomato crop last year.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPod Touch, like a pretentious pseudosnob.