You can almost make out what I'm so excited about from this photo ...
There's smoke coming out of the chimney!Yes, that's right, Dave got the wood stove working today. Here's a view of our cozy roaring hearth:
It was just so nice to come into the house and see that flame flickering there, and smell the faint odor of wood smoke in the air. (Dave said he'd had to open the door a few times to stir the fire -- hopefully that's the only reason we were smelling smoke!)
Sofia and I came out to check out the first fire. You'll notice our winter attire -- it's good and cold here already. Cold enough to really appreciate the wood stove! It was somewhat warmer in the house after the small fire that Dave built in the stove (you're not supposed to build a very big fire for the first one), which is pretty good, considering that the walls are only thinly insulated at the moment.
Getting the wood stove going involved "playing on the monkey bars," as Dave told Sofia -- climbing up the scaffolding to get the stove pipe in place. I was out helping him for a while last night -- I'm glad he was on there and not me. It's a long way down!Dave, who is clearly not comfortable with heights, said he just had to keep telling himself that if that board were on the ground he'd have no trouble walking on it.
To get in the last few screws on the far side of the pipe, Dave balanced a board from the railing on one side to that platform on the other. Whew! I'm glad I wasn't watching for that part. I might have hyperventilated.
... We went to Harvest Festival at our church this evening. It's an annual event that's taken place for many, many decades at our small country church -- a worship service followed by a potluck to celebrate the harvest and give thanks for it. I was recruited onto church council this year, and we chose this date for the festival because we were pretty sure harvest would be done for the year, or at least winding up. Ha! Almost none of the active farming members of the church were there -- our renter, in fact, was out combining until just an hour or so ago. I could watch him from my spot here at the computer -- the combine and semi-truck lights shone long past sunset.
Apparently the snow we've received isn't enough to keep the farmers out of the fields. The problem for them is that the corn is nowhere near dry yet; they can harvest it and expect to pay massive drying fees when they deliver it, or they can wait until spring and lose yields to deer, raccoons, and falling stalks. No good options there.
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