First Fire

Over the most recent two decades of my life, woodstoves have featured heavily in 17 of those years. We had a couple of years in our house on the Canadian border without a woodstove, and about six months in the rental house we first lived in in New Mexico didn't have one, either. But otherwise, I have built hundreds of fires to heat our homes both in New York and New Mexico.

Our woodstove in New York would hold a fire overnight, so it wasn't always necessary to build one every morning. But our woodstove here doesn't do that. I have to build a fire every morning. This is almost always my task, because I get up so much earlier than everyone else.

Looking at the weather forecast for today, I saw 48 degrees overnight and a high of only 59 degrees, with rain, for today. That, to me, spelled out "first fire" just as clearly as if it were in the forecast itself.

Accordingly, I spent some time yesterday cleaning up around the woodstove. I had to clear away all the things that had accumulated around the stove--the apple scrap vinegar that was fermenting, water jugs, empty ice cream buckets, etc.--and then vacuum off the woodstove itself and the area around it. It always gets very dusty over the summer.

The interior of the stove was cleaned out after the last fire, so that was ready. I had to shift the liquor cabinet from its summer position closer to the woodstove (and clean the cabinet and the area around it, because gross) to its winter position further over so there would be room for the wood rack.

Last, I gathered together everything I would need to start the fire: kindling that was still scattered in the area where the boys chop it for me in the winter, small pieces of wood, a box, and paper. I bring all of this in overnight so it won't be damp when I have to start the fire.

The younger children's old math workbooks are the best for starting fires, because the pages are so thin. And they like to see their math burn.

At 5:30 a.m., I layered the crumpled paper, ripped up cardboard, smaller pieces of kindling, bigger pieces of kindling, and small pieces of wood, and lit it.

The first flames of a very long woodburning season.

Barring difficulties like wet materials or zero draft, I can get a fire started in about ten minutes.

There it is.

When it's time to get the children up for school, I will get their clothing out of their rooms and lay it on top of the woodstove to warm up before they put it on. It makes it slightly easier to roust them out of their warm beds and into another cold school morning.

It's not yet time to burn the stove continuously, as the weather will fluctuate between pretty warm days and colder nights for some time yet, but the stove is now ready to go whenever its needed.

Are there any winter preparations happening at your house?