Burning that wood

When we moved to Maine we were prepared for the cold weather.  I remember some of our first days here. I thought to myself, more that once, boy I have never been so cold in my life.  Many people were surprised when we said we were moving to Maine.  They would say, it's so cold there.  Well it is.  Being here a year now I would say I have adjusted, somewhat.  I could never work outside in this weather.  But I will go out even when it is below 0 out.  I have found ways to dress in many layers.   I have, at least, a few shirts on and maybe even two pairs of pants.  I wear hats now.  I never would wear a hat before.  When its below 30 degrees you want to keep all the heat in so a hat is a must.  I don't care about my hair.  That is so funny.  I care about being warm first, that is more important to me.   I make sure I am by a roaring fire as much as possible.  Firewood is something we go through and I just don't care.  We burn firewood as our primary source of heat.  We have two wood stoves.

 One on our round side of our home and one on the Gabriel side of the house.  We filled the oil tank when we moved in a year ago.  We used oil for heat at first but with the prices being so high we wanted to make sure we were not waisting our money.  So one day we turned down the thermostat to 50 degrees.  From that day we have been using wood to heat.  It has been a year later and we still have 1/2 a tank of oil from our first delivery.
When we first moved to Maine we had to pay a higher price for wood that first season.  We did not know anyone and it was late in the season.  You find out fast in Maine that around March wood runs dry and is hard to get.  So that means you pay top dollar for it.  Last season we paid more per cord than we do this year.  We did find a great guy at the end of last season who will bring us two cord at a time for a great price.  That is who we have used all this winter.  So far we just had our fifth and sixth cord delivered to us.

 
I would like to hope this will last us till the end of the season.
We started off the season with about two cords of wood that we harvested from our own land.  We have plenty of woods.  Most of it was trees that had fallen or we had cut through-out the summer.  We did notice most local residents working on wood piles during the late summer and fall.  Our mistake for starting to late.

  Next year we will start pruning our land when spring comes.  We hope to gather at least half our wood for next winter season.  That should be a big savings next year.  Next we hope to find someone to deliver us some tree length wood.  If you get it in the summer or fall tree length we can cut and split it ourselves. That should save a lot of money.
So our goal will be to start the winter next season with eight cords of wood.  If we do that the savings would be huge.
We have also entertained the idea of a pellet stove.  They are said to burn cleaner and more efficient.  The only down side is you still have to buy the pellets.  We will not be able to harvest them from our land.  So that is just a thought for now.