“Wood heat is warm heat!” visitors exclaim as they’re drawn like magnets to our wood-fired stove to hold their hands over the top, rubbing them together. “It actually warms you up!” It’s so very true, wood heat is different from modern forced air heating— it’s embracing and wraps around you like a favourite blanket—but there’s a price to pay for that pleasure. In addition to the work of cutting, splitting and stacking the wood, there’s the inevitable dreaded chore of cleaning, and that’s a messy job at the very best of times.

At our place we have an abundance of plastic barrels for dock flotation. We needed an outhouse but we weren’t up to digging a pit, so my cousin came up with the brilliant idea of using one of the barrels.