First frost and functioning furnaces

We finally woke up to a frost covered ground Sunday morning.   The NOAA is really good about warning folks if there is going to be a hard freeze so we picked the remainder of the tomatoes Saturday.

I should have taken a picture of our backyard, because it was a gorgeous, sunny morning.  However, there will be far too many of these days to come, and I know I will be sick of cold mornings very shortly.

Our wood burning furnace from Yukon-Eagle has been put to work several times now.  I'm withholding judgement on its efficiency until when it's really cold, but currently, with night time temperatures dipping into the mid-30's and daytime temperatures around 55, inside temperatures have been reaching 75 degrees (the oil furnace is set to come on when the inside temperature dips below 62 degrees).

In any previous year, we kept the house at 60 degrees  (except when my dearest mother came to visit, when we cranked it to 68 degrees) in order to conserve oil, and thus we spent the majority of our time in the kitchen where we have a wood stove that can warm that room up quite well. We never spent much time in the living room (really a family room; certainly not a parlor), which didn't seem to get much heat, although the 1/4 inch gap between the outside door and the frame may have played a role in keeping the room from warming up (I can imagine my brother, who works for a green building company, cringing at that statement).  So, basically, we survived the winters by wearing lots of layers...indoors. 

The change this year is dramatic.  We come home and change into shorts and t-shirts.  I can spend the entire evening comfortably reading on the coach in the living room or playing a lively game of Yahtzee with the family.  It's a veritable heatwave in our farmhouse.

It is hard to predict how much wood we will need for the winter.  Right now, it is obviously much warmer inside than it needs to be and while I know that it is possible to reduce the amount of heat output from the furnace, I haven't invested any time in figuring this out (obviously the novelty of a warm house hasn't worn off yet).  If we can get through the coldest part of the winter burning 10 logs a day, then the 5 cords of wood we have stacked should suffice. 

Odd as it may sound, I have been so used to a cold home in the winter, that my whole worldview on winter and warmth is required to shift.  Whenever someone asked how I was in the winter, my default answer would be "cold".  It's not unlike the feeling I had when the Boston Red Sox finally won the World Series in 2004.  As a Red Sox fan, we were so used to the Sox coming in second, and we would curse the Curse and then mutter to ourselves that there was always next year.  Except in 2004 it was next year, and the Curse was reversed and the Sox were no longer in an 87-year drought.  Red Sox fans had to remake themselves, and I will simply have to do the same now that we have our new furnace.