Me with a big bag of collected pine cones
As soon as autumn started hinting at its arrival here in the mountains of western Montana, around mid-late August, I got back into the habit of splitting wood and gathering sticks for kindling for lighting fires in our cabin’s wood stove.
Last winter we purchased a 10 ton hydraulic log splitter to replace the handheld axe I had been wielding to chop wood. While I enjoyed learning how to use an axe, there was a lot of wood I just couldn’t get through due to large knots. I needed more fire power. The log splitter was a game-changer addition for us here at Empty Mountain.
Log splitter
This past year we experienced a very big pine cone infusion here at EM, thanks to the ponderosa pine trees. We’ve experienced pine cones dropping all around our cabin before, of course, but this year the amount of pine cones was significantly larger. When I looked it up online, other property owners all around the northwest have reported the same thing. Every day, for weeks in the spring and early summer, I would pick up at least a handful and toss them into disorganized piles in particular spots. The tripping hazard they pose is significant, so I would try to at least keep clear our main walking paths and certain areas around the cabin.
With an over abundance of pine cones, I started wondering about what we might be able to do with them. Wonderfully, as it turns out, they make really good fire starters once they are open and dried out. So on Sunday I filled a big bag with pine cones so we can make use of them in our wood stove for lighting fires.
There’s a knack to making fires when you’re using wood to keep your house warm every day. Since every stove is different, one must learn their own stove. And since every dwelling place is different, one must also learn what is needed for their own personal comfort level based on the size of the space that’s being heated. But when you depend on the warmth generated from your stove to heat your home, there is a natural incentive of wanting to learn the art of how to do it well and efficiently. I think I’m getting close to feeling relatively proficent in this art form, but I am also still very much learning.
At some point I’d like to focus some of our time and energy leading up to the winter months gathering our own firewood, but since we’ve been living out here we’ve mostly been buying it from a guy who sells it just down the road. We’ve just had too many other projects going that we’ve wanted to prioritize more. While it may seem easy to go around collecting wood for the winter since we live in the woods, it takes a lot of time to find it and haul it out and cut it all down to the size that will fit inside our wood stove. For now it’s easier for us to purchase it.
We’ve been experimenting with a few different things when it comes to lighting the fire and getting it going. When I drop off our recycling, I will often nab some newspaper from the recycling place to bring home. I also save any paper we have that we would’ve otherwise recycled so that we can use it instead as fire starter inside the stove. Same goes for some of the paperboard packaging we generate from the foods we buy. Mike will also sometimes spend time cutting a bunch of the wood scraps from the saw mill into small pieces to use as kindling, which is quite time consuming. And then I also go around on walks gathering up different sizes of sticks.
Given how small our cabin is - 12X14 - it does not take much to heat it up. Mike also insulated it really well, so it holds the heat for a while. In the coldest parts of the year we average lighting 3 small fires in the wood stove a day. Right now we are averaging 1 or 2.
We had our first fire of the fall/winter season on September 7. Our last fire before that was on June 29, which means we went about 10 weeks without needing to light a fire inside our cabin for heat.
Our two new kittens have started to join me on my walkabouts when I go out collecting sticks. Our last cat Larch used to do this too, which I really enjoyed. It’s been fun having them come along and also watching them explore their new terrain. Here’s a picture of River on our last excursion up to Morning Sun Meadow:
