Getting ready for winter warmth

A sure sign that we are heading into winter here at Phillips farm: wood piles everywhere. Josh has been busily collecting, splitting, and stacking wood. McGregor got in on the fun this week as well, for some nice father-son bonding.

Our house has two fireplaces: one in the family room and one in the dining room. When we bought the house it also had a huge wood stove in the kitchen.  We took that out to have more space for an Eden kitchen. Originally the house was primarily heated with wood.  

Since we moved in, mostly we have used the family room fireplace for ambience and a bit of extra heat on cold winter days. Josh would like to start using the fireplaces for more actual heating this winter though. We have been looking into fireplace inserts for the dining room. This would allow us to keep more of the heat generated in the house instead of losing it up the chimney. 

I think Josh is making the woodpile extra large in preparation for this possible insert. Every day or so it seems I come home to a driveway full of new logs to be split.  Josh and our neighbor Frank have been going off together into the woods nearby to collect dead ash trees. Because of the emerald ash borer there are a lot of dead trees in this area to be cleared.