Monday, December 10, 2012

Cold Returns

Looks like winter has finally hit us. We had 25 degrees last night and supposed to be 17 tonight. After that it warms back up to just freezing and slightly above, ending up in the 40's by the end of the week.

The new addition to the house is insulated and caulked, but we're having a bit of trouble heating up all 1024 square foot with our wood stove. Just doesn't seem to be able to push all across the whole house. Anyone sitting on the far side of the house is cold. I'm considering putting in a second wood stove, but we're going to wait and see how many cold days we get this winter. Hopefully won't be too many of them. In the house we can handle freezing and slightly below, but 17 is just too brutal. It has us all huddling under blankets.

The cabbages in the garden are touch and go. About half of them are alive still but nobody is really growing crazy big. The garlic was coming along pretty nicely but the chickens came along and ate what they could reach through the screen. I've really got to get a nice, tall fence up around that garden pretty quick. I like being able to free range the chickens as it just isn't economical to feed them constantly. But they seem to think "free range" means "free buffet in the garden".

The knife shop is progressing right along. I've got two orders completed and that leaves the order list empty, so I can get back to work on the shop knives. Haven't put any new ones up lately and the Etsy shop is still a mess. I guess that's this week's project.

Still here and kicking. Can't complain.

2 comments:

Gorges Smythe said...

Maybe you just need a larger stove, or even just centralize it better.

Allan K. said...

Just FYI: I have seen it get to -12F in your general area on
Christmas Day, 1989. Extra heating capacity is a very good
idea in your AO since extreme cold spells do occur there on
occasion.

Allan K.