by Myrianda

Created on: July 31, 2008

Two years ago I moved to the wilds of coal country West Virginia on a very tight budget. I quickly learned how to save on costs, how to live without electricity at times, and how to squeeze the life out of every penny to save money.

First, the house I live in has NO electrical heating at all. What does one do when there is no thermostat to magically make it warmer? You get out of the chair, walk outside, get some coal in a bucket as well as a few pieces of wood, and put it in the fire. Fire, you say? Maybe I should explain better?

My house is accessed by a bridge that spans a river. A very scary bridge. This means no company will bring heating oil to my house and no company will come over it to install any kind of electrical heat. This house has no heat pump, no furnace, no magical thermostat button. There are three wood/coal burning stoves in this house.

That is right, wood and coal burning stoves. Two of my stoves were given to me by my father the other I searched out, waffled over for several months, and finally bought. The third stove is also a cook stove with an oven and a large cooking surface; this stove saves on not only energy costs for warmth but for cooking as well as it is my main cooking utensil in the colder months.

In order to feed these stoves I need wood and coal, of course. I'm lucky in one aspect of this, I'm surrounded by acres of forest and the state regularly cuts down trees that may cause problems in the area...free wood! The only costs I've had for the wood is a chainsaw and the fuel to run it.

If you want to go even cheaper buy a handsaw. This may seem to take longer but by the time you get done caring for a chainsaw, coaxing it to life, and actually cutting you could have cut the tree up already. You will also need an ax to split the wood with.

Now the best idea on getting wood is finding trees that have already fallen. A fallen tree has already begun drying out, is already on the ground, and saves a living tree for later in life. (I can be a bit of a tree-hugger when it comes to cutting down living trees but I am a realist.) Wood needs a period of time to dry out or it simply will not burn, no matter how much lighter fluid you douse it with. If after hours of coaxing wet wood to burn it actually DOES light, you will have yourself one smokey fire!

Now we move to coal. Coal is harder to come by on my side of the river. Fortunately I live beside railroad tracks. Noisy as the trains are they bring coal through my neck of the woods. After talking

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