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A Deadly Fire
In Vermont winter, life depends on heat. At twenty degrees below zero — or at forty below, as R and I found in Irasburg in the late 1970s, before the winters warmed drastically — you are only safe if you have a good source of heat. With a baby in the house, reliable, steady heat meant even more to me, in terms of keeping our baby healthy and comfortable.
From 1978 through 1983, R and I paid increasing attention to a good supply of cut, split, dry hardwood for heating our homes. The farmhouse in Irasburg had a massive wood furnace in the basement, a fancy “Round Oak” stove in the living room, and in the kitchen a sturdy, wide cookstove with a pair of ovens, a warming box, and six adjustable circles that acted as “burners” to heat pots and pans. The original restaurant-size stove!
R loved drama. He swung the splitting maul ferociously against the chunks of wood we bought, the way a lumberjack might — and promptly, his back went into spasm. I never became good at splitting wood, but after that, I learned how to buy pre-split wood and tote it back to the house in the Subaru, a third of a cord in each packed load.
The log cabin in West Glover, simpler in construction, had only a basement wood furnace; with well-prepared wood, it kept the house more than warm enough. Thank goodness, we needed less wood, and bought it split and dry, ready to stack.
