Category Archives: Education

Educational Posts

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Surviving the Winter – Heating by Wood

Aside

Many of our hikers in the rural area heat by wood, either as a supplemental or primary heat source. Experienced homeowners have already prepared their wood stock in the fall, and if smart, have at least a two year supply built up, allowing the wood to season properly. Managing a wood stock requires a great deal of physical activity, cutting up different sizes of wood dependent on the size of the stove, chain saw experience, and stacking the wood for easy accessibility to the heat source. For more information on developing a wood lot contact cornell cooperative extention.

Many of my friends have shared information on their struggles this winter with the extreme artic cold temperatures which dramatically effects their heating expenses. In an attempt to keep their wood stoves efficient with heavy usage, many are using their wood stoves as a primary source of heat. Managing your wood stove requires routine daily chores of bringing wood indoors to dry, a good source of kindling, newspaper, lighters, container for disposal of ashes, as well as regular cleaning of the wood stove as well as the area surrounding the hearth. Heating by wood can be real messy and time consuming.

My own experiences this year have been more difficult than in past years. Thanks to Dean and Bob, two members of our hiking group who run a wood bank in Springwater, I was able to secure a source of about 3 cords of beech wood from Sugarbush Hollow, cut, split, and delivered. Luckily I had about a cord of wood left over from the year before. Although I have some experience in the game of logging and using a chain saw, I have no knowledge of cutting up wood, just felling a tree on a marked spot, and do not own a chain saw. Therefore I am depending on free sources of wood if I continue to heat this way. One would have to figure out if it is worth it to purchase wood compared to heating with alternative sources.

In January my source of kindling was low and I began to search for fallen branches, twigs, pine cones around my property. Frozen branches needed to be dried and this can take two days at least.
Sometimes it would take me a couple of hours to get my small Vermont Casting stove up to temperature. In search of better kindling two hikers, Bob and Marty offered sources of kindling that if I’m careful should last most of the winter cold months. Now it only takes 10 minutes to get my wood stove up and running efficiently. It is now mid January and I am warm. If I had planned better I should of been prepared by October.

A lot of our conversations at the hike and socials revolve around survival issues, which includes heat and food, for those that live simply in the little finger lakes area and don’t have the luxury of traveling to warmer climates. One hiker had a load of wood delivered just recently. Living on a hill and impassable driveway, she managed with a neighbor to pull the wood up closer to the house by some sort of pully system.

Some cautions if you allow friends to stay at your house while you are away.  Make sure they completely understand how to light the stoves. Make sure you have an updated fire extinquisher, working smoke alarms and leave clear instructions. In addition, with the cold temperatures, usage of wood can double, and a large wood stock for two years may be necessary.

In addition many wood burners have used other ideas revolving around heating sources. Some wood burners use their ashes to reduce ice build up in their driveway or sidewalks. I throw it on my garden for composing. The smartest idea I saw recently was one wood burner had his stove in the basement with vents in the flooring for the upstairs area. Putting a stove in a lower level, unused area greatly reduces the mess in the main living area. If you have a small stove, chances are your wood will go out at night and will have to be ignited again in the morning. Rather than getting up every 3 hours to restock your stove, purchasing a efficient electric heater, a heating blanket, and warm comforter and placing it in a small bedroom can help you get through the night if the temperature drops.

Do you heat with wood stoves.  I would love your comments*.  Please add your stories to this article.

*To add a comment, click on the title of this story and scroll to the bottom where you will find the comment box.

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Comments to start 2014

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As we begin a new year, ever consider all we can be grateful for?  How about having the good fortune to live in an area that has distinct and diverse seasons.  This gives us the opportunity, on Sunday afternoons, to enjoy the diversity, on the many neat hiking trails, and other resources, in the Western Finger Lakes Region.  It’s also nice to look forward to a good, usually full course, Sunday evening meal, enjoying the great fellowship of our fellow hikers.

On December 22, Don and Marty introduced us to new trails at Tumble Hill Campground.  Most hikers climbed the hill and were rewarded with a close-up view of one of the Cohocton wind turbines.  Our gratitude to Dena and Marty for posting their nice article and pictures.  Isn’t it nice to see us getting our energy from a natural source, rather than desecrating our beautiful landscape by subterranean shale fracturing?  If you want to see what it does, just cross the state line, into Pennsylvania.  Debra, the campground manager, is enthusiastic about our group, and welcomes our participation there.  I talked to her about coming back, maybe in July.  Let’s hope it’s a hot, sunny day, because they have a small lake, where they have built a swimming beach, with tables, where we can have our social, and get pleasant relief from the heat.

Our gratitude also to Tom and Jerri for sharing their fantastic vacation and adventure in New Zealand.  It’s always nice to enjoy other areas in our diverse planet.  For what it’s worth, this can help you enjoy it more.  We are the only country in the world that still uses the antiquated, English origin, measuring system.  Every other country is now using metric, including Canada.  So, if you learn the metric system, which is very easy, and “think metric”, you’ll have a better understanding of what they’re saying.  This way, if they tell you the temperature is 30 degrees, you won’t go for your sweater.  If you must convert Celsius to Fahrenheit, a quick way is to double the Celsius temp, and add 30.  Try it with 30 degrees C.

And, we definitely owe a big debt of gratitude to Rick, for planning 3 months of some pretty terrific hikes.  Looks like he’s leading most of them, himself.  If you haven’t volunteered to lead a hike this period, I’m sure he would appreciate any help you’d care to give him.

See you on the trail, in our winter wonderland.

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Dreaming of a white Christmas

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I’m dreaming of a white Christmas

Just like the ones I used to know

The famous opening lines of what is still one of the favorite songs of the December holiday season.  Did you know what inspired this song and who it was dedicated to?

This can be better understood if you get to know the writer.  He was born Israel Baleen, in Poland, and came to our side of the big lake, with is parents, at the age of 5.  It wasn’t long before he discovered his extraordinary talent for writing music and lyrics.  Some say it was to piss off Hitler that he changed his name after Germany’s capitol city, Irving Berlin.

Events in history often inspired him to compose.  In 1941, learning about the persecution of his people, in Nazi occupied Poland, including some of his own family, that he felt inspired to dedicate a song to his adopted country, that had given them freedom.  God Bless America is still learned by children today and, in 1941, copies of the famous recording of it, by Kate Smith, were flying off the shelf.

As December of 1942 approached, we had begun a series of Pacific island hopping, to bring the war back to Japan.  A detachment of US Marines were engaged in a fierce battle on a Solomon Island, called Guadalcanal.  Most of them were boys, between 18 and 20, about to spend their first Christmas, away from the loving comfort of their families, fighting to stay alive in this tropical hell hole.  And so, Berlin wrote the words and music to this iconic seasonal song, dedicating it to these young man, fighting on Guadalcanal.  Most people learned the song when sung by Bing Crosby in the movie, Holiday Inn but, now you know about its inspiration and dedication.

Next year will mark the centennial of the Christmas miracle of 1914.  More about that in this column, a year from now.

 

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Fading Footsteps and Falling Leaves

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The autumn leaves, drift by my window

Those autumn leaves, of red and gold

A lot of water evaporates from hardwood tree leaves.  During the summer, roots absorb water from the soil, which is transported to the leaves, where it combines with carbon dioxide to form sugars and other organic compounds (photosynthesis).  In winter, water can not be absorbed by roots, and flow up the trunk, when it’s frozen so, in order to prevent dehydration from water loss through leaves, the trees shed them for the winter, and grow new ones when the weather gets warmer.

Leaves have several pigments in them but, in the summer, the dominant one is the green chlorophyll, which is needed for the photosynthesis process that goes on in them.  When leaves start dying, in the fall, chlorophyll is the first pigment to decompose,  For a short time, the red anthocyanins and yellow carotines are present and, with the chlorophyll gone, these pigments can be seen, till they decompose and the leaf dies and breaks off.  Sumacs are rich in anthocyanins, and turn a deep red.  Sugar maples have both pigments and show a brilliant orange.  Besides giving us syrup in the spring, they bring lots of tourists to enjoy the “Turkish carpet” on the hills by the Finger Lakes.

Animals, too, need to prepare for the cold season.  If they aren’t endothermic, and make their own body heat, like birds and mammals, the rest of the animals, being ectothermic, need to spend the winter in some state of dormancy.  No protection from ticks or mosquitoes is needed in the weeks ahead.

So, join us on the Sunday afternoons ahead, and enjoy being a part of this annual transitional season.

But I miss you most of all, my darling

When autumn leaves start to fall