Many folks who want to live the self-sufficient lifestyle know how to handle their food: Hunting, gardening, and building a fire. Mastering the methods behind each of those tasks means you’ll never have to worry about starving, no matter the situation. But what about water? Specifically, hot water?
The EPA ruled that wood cookstoves are exempt from emission regulations. Great news for all cookstove users, right? Not quite. The EPA’s emission limits are the minimum limits that a state is required to have, but any state can add onto those limits in order to control their air quality even more. Washington is one state that has stricter emission standards than most, and as a result, it can be confusing to sort out what wood-burning appliances are allowed and what are not. As the largest seller of wood cookstoves in North America with the largest product line, we at Obadiah’s wanted to try and clear things up for our neighbors who live over in the beautiful state of Washington.
If you’re new to wood heat, you might be tempted to just grab the nearest block of wood, throw it in the fire, and call it good for the day. But those of us who have lived season after season by the light of the fire know the most important aspect of wood heat: Firewood. Here are six tips to help you get the most out of your firewood and keep that fire burning bright and hot all winter long.
When you picture a cookstove, what do you see? An old, dusty piece of equipment from a time gone by? An oddly shaped woodstove? Or maybe just an ordinary old stove? Like most people new to cookstoves, chances are you have a few misconceptions about what’s out there and what will work best for your living situation. In the following, we’ve compiled a short list of cookstoves that demonstrate the variety in design and quality that cookstoves have to offer today.
Using a wood burning stove is a staple of country life that, for many people, goes back generations. For good reason, too: It’s hard to beat the ease of use and reliability of a woodstove. Cut the wood, put it in the firebox, start the fire, and before too long you’ve got flames licking the edges of the window and heating your home. It may take more effort to start a fire than to turn a knob and wait for the heat to come on, but the beauty of a stove is in the control it allows. You provide your own fuel, decide when and how to burn it, and in the end you get the satisfaction of self-sufficiency. The amount of money you save by using wood heat over gas or electric is nothing to scoff at either.
However, there’s another kind of stove you don’t hear much about: The cookstove.
Using wood heat is not without complications: Smoke, even from burning wood, is an emission regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In the following article, we will explain what the EPA’s regulations mean to those of us who use or manufacture wood burning appliances such wood stoves and cookstoves.
magine this scenario: It’s the dead of winter. The ground is covered in snow, the temperature is below freezing during the daylight and worse after the sun goes down. Your power goes out. You’ve got water and a decent amount of food in storage, but your heat source went with the power and the temperature…
Here is a roast chicken that’s nicely browned, and also very tender. It tastes delicious, and is pretty easy to prepare. And to top it off, it is not finicky about temperature, which makes it an excellent choice for novice woodburners like us.
My friend introduced me to this breakfast treat in Tennessee some years ago, and I’m glad she did. It gets a nice chewy texture from both oats and cherries, and it tastes delicious.
This is my mom’s version of roast beef. Technically, it’s a pot roast, because it’s cooked with a lid on it and allowed to steam in its own juices. But it doesn’t come out like a pot roast, i.e., wet and slow-cooked till falling apart. It’s more roast-y, with a roast meat texture and consistency. And it’s very, very tasty.
