The Woodbox

This is the major source of heat in my cozy little house, a Buck stove. It’s an insert in a fireplace that was built in 1969, I think. When the fireplace was built, my mom and stepdad built a woodbox too. They had a similar woodbox in another home and really liked it. The woodbox is that hole you see to the right of the fireplace.


It has a door on the inside of the house and a door on the outside. You load the wood from the outside and take pieces out as you need them from the inside, thus avoiding traipsing wood across the silly, light-colored carpet I have. The woodbox holds almost a week’s worth of wood. This is how it looks from the outside.


I use the top shelf for firewood. There is a bottom area that sometimes holds buckets of small pieces of wood that are used for kindling. The buckets are empty right now, I have sections of old 1x6s that I hack up for kindling as needed. I'm strong these days, but not coordinated. You wouldn't want to watch me use an axe to split kindling.

Earlier this year I had Steve the concrete guy from across the road put in the sidewalk so I could pull my little yellow wagon loaded with wood. Here’s the view from the woodbox, looking back to the wood shed. It was built by my stepdad using old lumber.


The wood shed can hold 4 or 5 years worth of wood. Before John installed the Buck stove, we burned huge chunks in the fireplace and had to fill the wood shed every year. The Buck stove uses 12-14 inch pieces and is very efficient. This is inside the wood shed, organized recently by Bob’s cousin Joe.


Most of the wood comes from my property - valley oak, liquidamber, black walnut, locust, pine, old buildings and fences. In this wonderful topsoil, trees grow very fast. The branches overgrow the tree’s ability to hold them up. So every year there are branches to trim, or to cut up when they fall. Two years ago I had 2 huge liquidamber trees taken out because they were hanging over the roof. A little bit of the wood is live oak from the foothills. The ranchers need to clear brush from their pasture land and for fire control, and John likes to cut a little of it. There is a lot of brush for not much wood. The brush piles are left for bird habitat for the first year or so, and the wood is left in the field to dry. The brush is burned in the next wet season to prevent fire problems, so the ashes go right back into the soil that produced the wood.

I take the ashes from my stove every day and put them in a bucket. When they’ve cooled they get scattered around the yard. The lilacs love it. So do the trees. I don't put ashes in the flower garden, though.

Having a wood stove is a lot of work. It’s much easier to just turn up a thermostat, and maybe I’ll have to do something different when I’m old(er). But right now the extra work is enjoyable and I love cuddling up in front of the stove with a good Kindle book, 4 cats, and a homemade afghan. (I don't make them, I have several my mom made and a couple from friends.)

Happiness is a full wood shed.