Stocked up for winter...

... I mean, next winter...

We have just had, what I think is the last of our l'ete indien, and the lovely crisp mornings we waken to each day hold promise of the much welcome change in temperatures ahead.

Our Nordica Rosa - a.k.a. Rosie :)

Apart from the double glazing assisting in retaining heat inside the house, our sole source of warmth is from the Rosie - we don't use electric bar heaters, elelctric air-conditioning set on high heat, nor LP gas heaters.  Only the Nordica Rosie stove. The fact that it provides cooking facilities as well, is the added bonus. Well, truthfully, it was pointless just buying a wood burning stove for heating alone - if both requirements can be provided by the same unit, then surely that is the most cost effective solution.

There are plenty of alien Black Wattles in our area, which are slowly being "removed" by the WFW gang.  Last September we purchased two loads of chopped alien Black Wattle wood which the locals provide to anyone who needs wood for the upcoming winter, or their summer braai's.  Everyone knows, because of the dangers of resin accumulatingin your chimney's, that you can't use newly harvested damp wood in your stoves / fireplaces.  So, we try and source our wood early enough that we are confident that it has had sufficient time to dry before we need it.

Black Wattle logs - stacked last year in
September for use this winter

The hefty piles sort of sink into the ground as they dry.  They are also ideal place for mice and snakes to take refuge, so we site ours well away from the house / vegetable patches.  And very carefully select our wood when it's needed each day.

This winter we will have a mixture of Black Wattle and Bluegum with which to fire up the Rosie.  Bluegum is one of the hardwoods recommended by Nordica and it will be interesting to see the difference between the wattle and the bluegum - will it burn hotter and for longer?  Being much harder than wattle, it should.

The pile is growing and growing - time to
start a row in front.

It's always a mission collecting the firewood - getting to the invariably inaccessible spot where the trees have been chopped down, loading the wood onto the trailer, driving slowly back to our smallholding, and then...

1000 pieces of wattle on the right this time,
and the last of the 1000 pieces of bluegum
being off-loaded on the left

... off-loading it once we get there.  It takes about an hour to load it, and 3/4 of an hour to offload.

The cost - that has gone up since we got here.  It was ZAR200.00 / 1000 pieces in 2012, and is now ZAR300.00 / 1000 pieces  ($30-ish / €20-ish).  

But - that is still MUCH cheaper than we would pay in town.  There they sell a small bag of wood (roughly 12 - 15 pieces) for ZAR50.00 +  So - it is definitely the cheapest form of heating available.  We use about 20 - 25 pieces if we're having the Rosie burning from morning till night - so that would mean we could burn the Rosie all day, every day for roughly 80 days.  But, it's never that cold here that consistently, and we have good warm jersey's and jackets that we can put on if the need should arise.  Daytime burning of the Rosie is left for those rain-drenched, snow-capped mountain winter days and nights when we feel a need for the gemütlichkeit of a visible log burning fire to warm and lighten the dreary outside view.  2000 pieces should be more than enough to see to our needs for this winter.

Who needs to go to gym - even on a lovely crisp morning loading and off-loading that wood is exercise enough to get the blood flowing, and a small trickle of sweat to slide down between the shoulder blades :)

Thank goodness we don't have to chop down the trees as well :)