I am back!

My blog has been hit and miss for a long while now, but I have made a commitment to posting at least once per week regarding what is happening in my life and around me.  I will give my own limited view of what I see, what I feel is coming and what I and my group are doing to help ourselves.

One preparation item that we just did to our homestead was having a wood stove installed.  We had an outside wood furnace before, but it required electricity to operate.  For a while I was contemplating solar and wind along with a battery bank to use in case of power outages, but even with all that, we still wouldn't be able to cook off of it, so we decided to make the move to an internal wood stove.

I am going to have to get used to the much smaller wood box.  I can only burn 21 inch logs in it now, but with our old outside wood furnace, I could put 3 foot + logs. 

Good thing about the internal fireplace is that we are capturing a lot more heat out off of the flue that was going to waste outside, so it should be much more efficient.  I have little problem in heating our house up to 75 degree's in a very short amount of time. 

This winter there will be a pot of stew or chili up on top almost at all times.  Throwback from when I was growing up.