PORTLAND FOUNDRY COOKSTOVE
The Isolation Blues;
reflections during covid-19
The last two months I’ve been “wooding-it” around our place; the practice of splitting, stacking and organizing the wood supply for the upcoming heating season. In our case that’s only about 4 cord of hard wood (which is a modest amount) but the split size required for our Stanley Waterford wood cookstove in the farmhouse kitchen is so small it’s a lot of handling. There is nothing quite so satisfying as standing in a wood shed full of seasoned hard wood ready for whatever winter might bring our way. Today’s Isolation Blues feature is a journal entry from wood-prep season back in 2002 when Linda and I were still living in the cabin. It appears in the “journal entries” section of this writer’s blog.
September 18, 2002
With the sudden turn to more “seasonable” temperatures, Linda and I officially christened the old woodstove for the 2002-2003 wood-burning season. There is no set-date for this occasion, you just know when it’s time. We walked in the door one evening, and without saying a word I went straight to the kindling box for a Boston Globe and some cedar starter. I knew Linda was thinking the same thing. (She’s easy to read when it comes to timely heating variables.)
Our cabin sports a vintage turn of the century Portland Foundry Co. cast iron cookstove. A couple of years back, my Dad and I were returning from the town dump on a Saturday morning, and we decided to stop at Cote’s Auction House in downtown Monticello. Cote’s has all the local flavor you can expect out of a small New England town. The floors are slanting in several different directions at the same time, a couple of old couches for sale in the back serve as a customer lounge, and the standard pot-bellied stove is always cranked up in the cold time of year. When we walked in, I immediately spotted the Portland Foundry stove sitting in the corner. I also noticed my Uncle Charlie standing right in front of it eyeballing it real close. My Dad walked up to him and said, “You’re not thinking of buying that old stove, are yuh?!” After a few minutes, my Dad had convinced Uncle Charlie it was way too much money for an old stove he didn’t need. As the story goes, my Dad had a harder time convincing me. Time to fire up the stove for another year…
This is a short excerpt from Scott and Helen Nearing’s home-steading classic, The Good Life:
Wooding-it (in the vernacular) has been a basic source of income, a pleasant leisure occupation and health-preserving avocation ever since human beings learned to make and use fire for their purposes. The practice is still popular, even in centers dedicated to technology, mechanism and automation. Wooding-it can be practiced by any homesteader or householder. It requires only a few simple hand tools which anyone can learn to use effectively. It occupies spare time that might otherwise be spent in front of the TV and keeps even decrepit oldsters out in the open while they make a real and substantial contribution to family comfort and practicality.
This is a photo I found online of the old Portland Foundry wood cookstove (Atlantic model) that we used to have in the cabin. It has since been scrapped at Monticello Metal Shippers and replaced by a more practical, easier to use model for cabin guests. The front shelf of the stove made a great plate warmer and I consumed many a breakfast on cold mornings sitting right there…
Please continue to take care everyone.
In the woods,
Dave
October 8, 2020