Wood Burning Cook Stove

At my cabin, I cook and heat the place with a wood burning cook stove. It’s a fine old stove, a Home Comfort made by the Wrought Iron Range Company of St. Louis, Missouri. The company made cook stoves from 1864 to 1940. Salesmen sold them all over the country, especially in the Midwest.

I bought the stove in 1970, used of course. Let’s say it was one of the last stoves the company made, in 1940. The stove was but a youngster in 1970, a scant 30 years old. Today, 40 years later, the old stove is a senior citizen. But like a bunch of other 70 year olds I know, it’s going strong. It’s a little rusty here and there—but the grates are fine, the oven works and it burns wood today as well as it ever did.

And what a wonderful heat it provides. Sure, if you are in a hurry to cook something my old stove would probably send you to McDonald’s. But hurry is not what my cabin is about. My cabin is about slowing down—doing slow cooking, sometimes very slow cooking. But I must say, and I know it’s my opinion, homemade soup cooked on a wood burning stove is just about the best thing you could ever put on the table when the snow is piled high and temperature hangs down there around zero. I can smell it now.


THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Watch the sun set when the temperature is below freezing. The sky is steel blue that turns black as the sun sinks away and the thermometer plummets.

WRITING WORKSHOP: The dates for my writing workshop at The Clearing in Door
County for 2010 are August 8-14. Contact www.theclearing.org for further information.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

Oakwood East Community Center, Madison. Saturday, February 13, 9:30 a.m. (Delta Kappa Gamma—Educational fraternity) (Stories from the One-Room School)

Eau Claire Farm Show, Eau Claire Indoor Sports Center, March 3, 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. (Stories From The Land)

Aldo Leopold celebration, Lake Geneva Public Library, March 6, 10:30 a.m. (Old Farm and Ames County novels.)

Wisconsin Studio, Overture Center, Madison, WI, Sunday, March 21, 1:30 p.m. (Old
Farm)

UW-Baraboo, “Add Learning to Your Life” workshop for those 55 and older. March 25, 11:30 a.m. (Stories From the Land) Call 608-355-5234 for further information.

Westfield Public Library. March 31, 12:45-1:30. (Ames County Novels)