Firewood

On a cold and damp day, as most days are in November, it's lovely to have a fire in either of our stoves. The house is heated perfectly well by the boiler in the cellar providing hot water for the central heating but the wood-burner gives an extra boost. Partly it gives extra warmth (and saves a little electricity) and partly the heat is so dry that it feels even cosier than the warmth suggests. If you've been out in the chill and want warming, a fire, a wood-burner, gives you direct, radiated heat in a way central heating can't match.
Today, in the morning, we had the woodburner going downstairs and the tiled stove lit upstairs so the whole house felt wonderful. The only problem was we eventually ran out of wood!
Anyone who has burned wood in their home is familiar with the saying that wood warms many times. When you cut a felled tree into logs,  when you split the logs, when you build a woodpile, when you carry it to the house, and finally when you burn it. Today I proved the point as I replenished our supplies after our walk. The dry wood in the cellar was carried up to the house, damper wood from the woodpile was carried into the cellar - by the time I was finished I didn't need to light any fires to get warm!
Just now we are burning a mix of wood, some from felled trees and some from the remains of our old veranda which we replaced in the summer.
I finished the day chopping and salting and bashing cabbage for sauerkraut. It was added to the special ceramic  pot we bought earlier in the yea, which is now filled with two and a half kilos of fermenting cabbage. It sits in a corner of the kitchen and occasionally lets out a gentle bubble of gas.