How to Start a Fire in a Wood stove | Essential Country Living Skill

You're new to a wood stove. To get a fire started, well, in the morning, this has been burning all night long. We had— this is good to have some water in this. This heats this up, water comes and evaporates and makes it more— makes up for some of the dryness that a stove caused by creating some humidity. So I look in here, I want you to notice something. A lot of people clean out their stove a lot. This is one area where you can feel good about being negligent. Do not clean out your stove a lot. You want ashes building up because then you save your coals. See, we have some coals in there. We don't have enough coals to just put kindling in, so this is a good example for somebody who's even just trying to start a fire from fresh. If I would have maybe gotten to this earlier, maybe as soon as I woke up, it would have been good. Let's fill this up. So the first thing you're going to want is Lots of paper. Grandma had saved us some newspaper. That works great. White paper also works great. Wad it up in bunches like this. We're gonna basically— we're basically gonna make a pyramid. Now hopefully that doesn't catch while I'm doing this. I mean, it's okay, but for the sake of the lesson, I hope it doesn't catch yet. Uh, you don't want to do a big— like, see how there's multiple pages? Do one page at a time. If it gets too thick, okay, so is too thick, it's a little harder to burn, maybe like cardboard. So you want it to be really easy to light, but you want a bunch of it. All right, now if you didn't have coals, you would want to use a match to get that going, but you would not do it yet. Hopefully that won't light yet. Good morning, Lily. Next thing you want is some kindling. Notice that's like half inch to an inch thick. We just split it with a log splitter. They make splitting splitting tools. Like, Lehman's sells a splitting tool. You could get dry twigs off the ground. Hey, can you pause that for a second? So now, once you want to— hey, Lily, you want to come shine that light over here? You want to build a pyramid. I mean, basically, just like if you're camping out and you're building a fire, we're building a pyramid over our paper. Oh look, the newspaper caught fire. It would have been better if I would have finished building my pyramid because then I wouldn't have to reach into a fire. Because these are nice and dry and little, They're gonna catch on. Now, one— thank you, Lily. Now, one trick you can do with a wood stove to keep that going, get some air pumping to it, crack it. And then red and blue, you gotta crack it, suck an air in, right, Mr. Brown? Yeah. And you want to show them what next? Is this our starter? Actually, I had kindling in here. Whoops. Okay, that's our kindling. Now we want some starter logs. I missed a piece here, and this is almost a starter piece. It's a little thicker. It's in between kindling and a log. Next, what I like to call starter logs, so more like 2 to 3 inches thick, maybe 1 inch, you know, just a variety. Again, we split it. Use a tool for that. You could use a maul, a splitting maul, a sledgehammer and wedges. Why am I getting so messy? You don't need a whole lot. It's just to take you middle, middle stage before you get to big stage, which— let's grab some of that while we're at it. I have a nice carrier. I should have brought it out here to show you. Hey, to pause it for a second, Lily. Something like this is handy because it sits in here but you can— I should have done this— you can carry this out and get more wood and bring it in. These, the little handles, latch on to the holder, and these bigger ones you carry it with. Anyway, our fire's still— our stove's still cracked. It's getting air. It's like blowing on it. It's the equivalent to blowing on it. You don't want to keep it like that too long. You'll heat your stove up too hot, but it's all right. You just don't want to like leave it unsupervised. So now we're continuing our pyramid with what I call starter logs. The pyramid collapsed. Hopefully it's going strong enough. Hey, can you pause that? See, watch this. All right, let's crack it to get it going good. See it? It's catching on in there. See how fierce the wind is? It's like a continual blow. Go get your sweater on, G. Can you help me? It's right there, bro. So right here, well, this one's out of commission. Oh, I forget which one's out of commission. One of these out of commission. Now we don't know because they're both on zero. But anyway, we get you an Inferno stovetop heater, and that tells you what temperature is and when it gets too hot. Now see, Phil, I would say, see, Phil, Feel this, it's, it's warm still from last night and keeping those ashes in, keeping the coals in. We got our water, we're good. This is catching on. Maybe we could add some bigger ones now. Uh, we'll do another starter log. And now here's kind of a like an in-between starter log and firewood, so we'll do that. And now let's just go a little bit. While we get ready for the day, getting the milk stuff ready and all that. Hey, your sweater's right here, my man.

Right here. What?

Okay, come on. I think the boys already have the cows in. You can tell they're on it, man. This is going really good. Let's, uh, we're gonna have to shut this. Oh, see, we got a little bit of moisture. You can hear it hissing. The wood's, uh, probably more like wet than not seasoned. You want your wood to be— have been dead ideally for a year, uh, and dry, like out of the elements. This wasn't. I think we split it from being outside, so not best practice. But best thing to do is if you could chop down a tree, have your wood, uh, under a shed If you're buying it, you're going to want to get seasoned firewood. That's what it's called. All right, that's good. Probably lock it. It's going to slow it down, obviously, but hopefully we've got a catch. We'll come back maybe after the first milking. You'll get this— like it says, too hot at 7— at 650. So, um, and then there's an ideal spot. You're burnt, you're making car— Creosote if, if it's like below 400. So you want to get it up past that spot into the sweet spot from 400 to 650. And to speed it up, obviously it needs sped up right now, we open our air vent right here. Your stove may be different, all stoves are different. Oh look, this, uh, ash trap sometimes gets left open, so I just secured it real quick there. So the stove is completely sealed. You want it to— you want to get through this, but you don't want to get through it like lightning fast, or you can heat up your stove too, too much. If it's your first time using this, using the stove for the season, or the stove period, build a small fire one night, just like with kindling, and then end it. The next night, kindling and starter logs And then the next night, kindling, starter logs, and maybe one firewood, end it. And then full-on fire. Those are called break-in fires, and that helps break in this cast iron. We do that every season going into this. I think I've told you everything I need to tell you. Oh, if it gets too hot, what do you do? If it gets too hot, then all you can really do is slow down the oxygen intake. Your, your stove will have some sort of oxygen intake. This is a Yodel, uh, forget what brand. We really like it. It's a 70,000 BTU. It's a big stove and it does well when we get it cranking hot. We can be comfortable in here when it's 30, 40 degrees outside without having the furnace to kick in. Hey, I just dropped your sweater. Where is it? Come on. Where's your sweater?

What?

Where's your sweater? I just gave it to you and now it's gone. Come on.

It's back.

Let's go get it. Right here, my man. Wait, are you not going with me?

That's what I need.

Okay then, let's work towards that goal. If that's our goal, we have steps towards it. Come on. Here. Now let's do it right. Let's pay attention. Hey, is our goal to get outside? Is our goal to get outside? Then what do we have to do to get there? Thanks for getting the towel up.

Oh, okay, I'll pick that up.

Oh, that's your new Lego, man. It was on the fridge and you opened the door. Here, you just— here's the box. If you can't find your instructions, we can probably look them up online, okay? We can probably fix it. 10 minutes later. It's starting to go. Okay, nothing roaring, it's just catching. It's not going to go out. You can watch it, you know, kind of check on if it started to putter out. You could, you could crack it, get some speed on it. Okay, but I think we're gonna have enough. I think it'll be good. We'll check on it again in about 30 minutes. Josiah, do you know what Jonah did with those extra pig scraps?

I know.

It's raining.

Remember last night?

What?

Big thunder.

Oh, was there thunder last night?

Yeah.

What's the matter?

It's not going on.

Hello? Don't—

Aniki no. Anikaino. There we go, you got it.

I got it? Yeah. Hey, wait, where are you going? You coming with me? Oh my gosh, I thought that was the deal. I got you ready and you played with me. So what you just saw there, I was making a video for, uh, my member area. One of my members texted me and said, hey, could you ever do a video on how to start a fire in a wood stove? That may seem dumb, but we just got a wood stove. That's not dumb. That's not dumb. But that is very possibly part of your country living lifestyle that you're gonna now have that you might not know how to do. So I'm gonna end up— you guys got it, uh, longer form, more kids interrupting form, but I am going to chop that down, put that in the member area. Just sharing that with you guys this morning, kind of giving you a behind-the-scenes look. Also giving you who some who maybe aren't in the member area, uh, a bit of the content there. And letting y'all know that's coming out. We're launching that spring launch end of the month. How's it going, Brianna? Good. How'd we do, Brianna?

Uh, first of all, I beat Justin Rhodes at milking this morning. That should be noted. And second of all, look at all that foam. I feel like we did a really good job. We have lots of foam. Yes, because we milked quickly.

Yes.

Yeah, I'm really proud of us. Okay, I'm actually gonna go check.

All right, we're gonna put Flossy in here. That's, that's different. I must put Phyllis in here. That's better when it works out that way because Flossy's only got to back out and right into there. Come on, come on, come on. Good girl. Good girl. Come on, come on. It is easier when we keep this one open for Flossie. Come on, you can get behind her and hold the door. Pocket full. Oh my gosh. I'm thinking about what I just taught you with the stove, and it just seems so everyday to me, but there's a story there. I'm opting out of something. I'm trying to think of it in the sense of— I'm opting out. When Rebecca and I moved here after we got married, we were just living a country lifestyle. Style, but we didn't have any homestead or anything. Uh, we had fireplace. That was a fireplace where my wood stove is. But I don't know if you know anything about that, but fireplace is super inefficient. Like, it draws heat out of the house. So unless you're right there by the fire, it's not warm. Can y'all see me? So it was inefficient. What's happened once we started you know, making— I go at this farming thing trying to cut bills as much as possible. I mean, we're running a furnace, uh, oil. That could be very expensive during the winter for a frugal homesteader. And then you start to look— let me show you. With 75 acres, most of it in forest, you start seeing all these trees that have fallen down, these trees that are dead standing, and you're like, wait a minute, there's fuel right there in front of me, basically free. I just have to do the work. And that's most certainly what it's about when you're getting off the ground, and what it was for us. I mean, you're busting it. Uh, you got more time than money. We busted it, started making our own firewood, and a beautiful thing happened. Not only was fuel less expensive, it was more, uh, environmental friendly. It's cozier, guys. Have you ever felt the furnace heat, like, dry versus a wood stove heat where it's maybe warmer in the living room, colder in the, uh, bedrooms? That's nice. That's what you want. And the satisfaction of the power goes out, your wood stove's still going. Like the other day when our furnace failed, had we kept our wood stove going that night it wouldn't have been nearly as dramatic. As much as Rebecca and I love the grid, it's wonderful to have redundancy because if the grid goes out, we have the wood stove.

While Papa was milking, I looked out at the chickens and I saw a goose egg. There's the goose egg.

You got it! Whoa, bring it here! Here. Good job. Nice. Now that we have less time to even, uh, process our own wood, it's still worth it. We still save money. It's still more environmentally friendly heat. It's still redundancy. It still just feels better. Just like literally, not like feels better in your soul. I mean, that too, but feels better, like comfortable. It's just a more comfortable heat. It's hard to explain it unless you've ever experienced wood stove heat. Aren't I blessed, man? I don't have to import wood. —can have others help me process it. On farm, it's worth it. But even if I had to import it, it's really not that expensive compared to what it actually takes to process it. I still think it would be worth it to burn firewood. Quite the maze the kids created for me there. What are y'all doing?

Yeah, we are moving wood back and forth. Why?

We're pretending that it's a big factory. Oh, you guys are the factory workers?

Yeah, but we're only kids, so this is the industrial workers.

Yeah, and we're, um, look at these factory workers. And now listen, I cleaned this porch up real nice yesterday. Yeah, we just did actually. Oh, you did? Will you keep it clean for me?

Yeah, sir.

Look at the smoke coming down. Woo!

Whoa, whoa!

Love it, the smell. Oh, okay, look, it looks like it's gone out a bit. Okay, okay, we got some coal. Oh, we might have run out of wood. Okay, so we're back checking on the wood stove. Let's see, it was kind of dim like this. 30 minutes later, we got some coals. Maybe we burn it up. I don't know, they're good. It just needs a little bit of air to get going. Again, maybe, maybe this wood wasn't completely seasoned, so it's taking a little longer to catch, but it's fine. I mean, look at all the— look at all the coals in there. Actually would have been fine. Let's check our temp. Oh, it's that one that's broke. So this one's up. Yeah, we can get hotter than this. We'll get it hotter by what, you know, stirring it a little bit, adding more fuel to the fire. Now it doesn't always need this this much meat. It's usually just catch it like this. A really dry piece. So maybe those, you know, given the hissing sound, maybe it was just a little moisture in there. And it has been sitting out in the rain since like 3/4 of a year. We should have got it under a shed. All right, there we go. Oh my gosh, they're having a time. Oh, look at that! Did you guys see that? Look at that goose egg. Can you see that? Boom! Look at it. It won't even fit down here. We'll put it upside down. Are y'all hauling it back now? Yeah, man. I want us to play Industrial Revolution when it's time to bring that wood from over across the street to the shed.

Okay.

Jonah's tied up. Josiah tied up. Josiah's tied up. I'm trying to trick the kids into cleaning up. All right, I've told them, uh, they're— I'm the emperor and I'm going on a visit, but he likes to have a clean palace, and can they be servants and be cleaning it up? So we'll see. Looks like they might be. I told them he gets grumpy if they don't and he rewards if they do. As bad as a toddler sometimes. Just sit up. Stay right there. How's that? There? More secure. Okay. Here comes the emperor. Oh, my word. Oh, look at these guys. The maid is clean, and the knights have been not clean. As bad as a toddler sometimes. Just sit up. Stay right there. How's that? There. More secure? Okay, here comes the emperor. Oh my word. Oh, look at these guys. I'm a prince but I'm a boy.

The maid's clean and the knights have been not clean.

Oh, the knights have not been cleaning. They've been guarding. Oh man, it looks good. Fire's going good. Look! Oh my gosh, Empress, look at here. Uh-oh, we're gonna have to have a big reward. They've cleaned the hallway. Oh my gosh. Whoa. Uh-oh, did they clean their room? Oh my word, I think the Emperor's gonna faint. I think he's gonna faint. Oh, oh, I got it. It's so clean. Wow, Becky, I gotta come up with something. Everybody gets a round of Heavenly Organics.

Yeah, the maids and then the knights.

Don't like it, don't throw it on the ground. Rain or shine, you plunge. By the way, we're not just crazy. This is— there's There's health benefits to this, one being boost our immune system, one being a minor stress mentally prepares us for big stresses. Uh, the breathing when you get in helps oxygenate your blood, releasing soothing hormones. We're not just crazy, we're not just doing this for kicks and giggles.

Look at you, extra hardcore, watering your plants after the I'm soaking wet, so I'm all like, might as well just—

That reminded you that your lettuce is jamming. Hey, your kale's jamming, your romaine, your cauliflower. It's all jamming. You staying here with us? Yeah. You staying in here? Look at Almanzo in the doghouse. At least it's not in vain. Come on, I'll help you with your shoes. We gotta go vote.

Vote for Luke Skywalker! Vote for Luke Skywalker! Right in there. Right in there.

Oh my word. That's why we don't go anywhere with this stuff. Okay, what? You're good.

Let's get unbuckled for a second.

This is not cool.

This is not out. All right, there. Is that better? Put it up there. All right, Mom's got a speech.

Okay, can everybody be quiet?

Homeschool social studies for the day.

You're a dork. Okay, so today is what is called a primary election. Here it is, voting section in the back.

Let's go. They're probably not going to let us film in there, so we're just going to leave See you in 3, 2, 1. Boom! Done. I voted today. North Carolina. Here everybody, get some hands in the air. Pop would be proud.

Yes, your dad would be very proud.

I remember when I was 18 and I got to vote. I had no idea. I was not political at 18 years old, but I wanted to vote. I knew that much, that I wanted to vote, that this was a very good privilege and not everybody has this privilege. And I said, Pop, who do I vote for? And he just— And I guess now I just say, Rebecca, who do I vote for? Copy your sheet. Better than canceling your vote. It is.

At least we're on the same page.

Might as well not even go vote if we're gonna vote opposite. Might as well stay home. I would.

I would stay home. I wouldn't do this. Well, I don't know. I feel like I should vote. So for sure, maybe I still would do it even if we were gonna cancel out.

I don't know what it is for the principal, isn't it? You're a principal's woman. I've been editing 10 till 4. Hey, you gonna go do the chores? Okay, sweet.

What happened to you, my man? Biggest adventure I've ever had, and I don't know how long. I would say so, my favorite.

All right, well, the voting set us off, man. I gotta still edit. You don't mind doing the chores? They're easy today. Okay, good. Can you say bye-bye, cows? All right, wrapped it up. Somebody said in yesterday's video we were back on the Mr. Rogers of farming. Is it because I changed my sweaters? I have an indoor sweater and then I have an outdoor sweater. Or is it because I'm kind? Hopefully it's because I'm kind. I'm trying. Do I even need a sweater? They just came in in bathing suits. Do I even need a sweater?

No, I'm gonna wear a sweater because I'm only wearing a tank top. But no, it's pretty warm outside.

You know, even if it is 45 minutes, the key is to constantly tinker and keep moving and progressing on the farm. So hopefully we can knock out these chores and work on the fence a little bit. What an absolutely beautiful day. You know what, I don't even know if we need this. That grass is 6 inches tall. You guys need that? Looks like maybe they don't need hay. Look how much leftover hay they have. I think spring is here for you guys. This field, this green grass is the result of sea monsters. I'm telling you, where we've had sea monsters meet chickens, the grass is greener. We just added up how much sea monsters we need. Okay, we have 126, so we don't need to order as many sea monsters this year. But what about our other areas of pasture that we need built up? So animals aren't just food for us, they're doing work on the farm. Sea monsters fertilizing. How are we gonna make that happen? Without as many sea monsters. I got an idea. We need to pour half of that to the pigs. I don't want to go in there with a full bucket, so let's get us a liquid bucket. Now anyway, what about ducks? What about ducks? We don't have any ducks in our freezer. That— the meat shaw would be perfect, I think, for ducks. What if we ran a ducks? And of course we're gonna do turkeys. So yeah, okay, that's gonna be really fun. Let's do half. I'm excited. You guys need to get out of there. It's starting to stink. They need some deep bedding, but we can't— we gotta get them out. Let's get them out in the forest. The problem is I feel like I need to— like, why would I put the pigs out if the cow's fence isn't even hot? I've got some foundational work to to do before I start a new project. You put that in first. Yeah! Oh no, no, no, no, no, no! I must get it all. Oh, this is bad. Okay, uh-oh, we're gonna spill it all. This is bad. Okay. All right, come on, come on. Whoa. All right, putting that up here. Hopefully they don't bite me. I got you guys. Calmness. All right, let's get some of this bedding in there. When we're out of this bedding, we're out of this bedding, and we need to be out of here. So we got goals. Almost done. You ladies are gonna sleep good tonight. Pigs are fed, sheep are fed. Let's work on this fence. All right, we've got a kit. This is an insulator that has been broken off. Okay, we got a new connector to loop it to, and we got a new plastic insulator there. This needs to not be loose so it can pull that way. It needs to be nice. Now this side's even messier. It's only one insulator. New handle here. And time's up. I might have a few more. You see, you see why I've been putting this on? I just want to do pigs to forest. The easy fix— this gate's down right here, so that's destroyed. And then we'll have to go in for supper and we've at least fixed one thing. All right, there is my temporary rig. That's one less grounding spot. Let's hook it up and be satisfied and just 1% change, guys. If you make 1% improvement every day, it doesn't take long to double down, man. Cheers to 1% change. I may not have fixed my entire fence system, far from it, but I did something, and that's better than nothing.