First Time in Years.....

It's a nice, balmy -3° today....

It makes you understand why sheep wear wool coats....

My wife inherited a cook stove that had belonged to her Great-Grandmother, then her Grandmother (it bypassed her mom because she had one already!).

We used it a lot when we lived in Independence Missouri. It was in the kitchen but, it would heat a lot of the house. Our Dachshund would LOVE to stretch out underneath it and toast. She would lay there for hours, and actually acted disappointed when we didn't light it.

We took it with us when we moved to Nebraska but didn't use it because it had been "dis-assembled for the move - and nobody remembered who took it apart, let alone how to put it back together again!

It took six people and 2 gorillas to get the heavy beast into our kitchen but, with the help of relatives and friends, we got it in the door. It was "trial and error" from there, to get it back together again ("....all the King's horses, and all the King's men....."). My back hurts just THINKING about it...

We had made a special place for it in Deb's new kitchen addition. We made it so the walls were extra protected, the firebox would be on the "room" side, and there would be plenty of space for the chimney.

That's as far as we got for nearly 4 years...

Until a neighbor gave us his wood furnace and a good amount of triple wall chimney pipe to go with it. We FINALLY got the stove hooked up a couple of months ago.
Today, we decided to start a fire in it. It is the first time since 1996 that it has been used. It will take awhile for it to get heated up and be able to warm the room like it used to but it will be nice when it does.
Here's the first fire:



And the first "use":



The other day, while I was burning the brush pile down, I managed to get this photo of the sun setting. It was a cold end of a cold day. All the blues, greys, purples, and white captured how cold it really was.



Maybe we can let the fire in the stove die out this afternoon - we're supposed to get a "heat wave" come through and warm us up to 4°....