We had a little bit at first.
The McClinchy river is quite low now. The flow is restricted in the high country where everything is frozen so not much water gets to lower elevations.
We had one very pretty day, then it got cold. The temperature never got below -18C, which is not at all cold for here, but these fronts pack a nip far below the given temperature, even when there is no wind. I have no idea why that should be so. Day temperatures never exceeded – 12C.
I was glad of the stone stove that I built with Mogens last spring. (Check out the posts itemized under the category “building a stone oven” on the side bar at the right.)
Because of the chimney configuration it tends to smoke when the door is open, but otherwise it burns fine. I use the cookstove in the morning for a faster fire, but that does not hold the heat. So about an hour before sundown, I light the stone stove – by the time the sun has gone, the rocks are radiating heat nicely. I cook supper on it, then give it a last feed before bed, and the cabin is toasty all night and still warm in the morning.
The birds, who had been mostly ignoring the feeder, suddenly flocked to my offerings. Most common were the mountain and black-capped chickadees.
Mountain Chickadee
I was most surprised to see a couple of starlings. They are the only alien birds that visit here; they usually pass through for a couple of days in the spring. They are among a list of British birds found in Shakespeare that were introduced to New York by some misguided philanthropist. They are not designed for colder climates. These two were definitely out of their element.
As it finally warmed up, it snowed in earnest, and we had about 6″.
Three grey jays, also known as camp robbers and whiskeyjacks, usurped the feeder.
The sun came out, and the snow became magical before it all got melted and blown off the trees.
It is supposed to snow a bit more before the weekend, but I hope not too much, for I wish to have a booth at the Tatla Lake Christmas craft fair. It is also supposed to thaw so I expect I will be able to drive out without having to have the road ploughed.
Sam, who has worked at bakeries as part of his chef training, kneaded it.
Then we light the fire in the stone oven outside the door. (I have an indoor one, but it is way too hot for the summer.)
We need to fill the oven with wood three times.
It takes 3 or 4 hours to heat the oven properly – which is just about the same time as the bread takes to prove. Then we rake out the ashes.
The next task is to mop it out to pick up the remaining ashes. The baking stone is usually too hot right away and we must wait 5 minutes or so before we throw the bread in. We test the temperature by throwing in a handful of flour. If it blackens right away, that is too hot. The flour should brown within about a second but not burn.
About 40 minutes later – Taaddah!!!!!
Because it takes so long to heat the stone oven, I spend the whole day baking. On that day we made 2 wholewheat loaves (each one is twice the size of a store-bought loaf), 2 rye loaves, one herb bread, 2 large cakes, and some baked potatoes for supper. In two days time, Nuk Tessli’s first paying guests arrive and tomorrow I will be doing a much bigger baking.
I wasn’t sure how to fit the chimney. There wasn’t room behind the cookstove to insert the chimney into the wall. So I figured I could run it directly through one of the lids on the cookstove top.
I got the idea of building a stone oven from a friend who incorporated a 
We drew round the edge of the cookstove top with a felt pen, made a frame of scrap lumber, then patted on cement. We placed the cookstove top on once again and pressed it into the wet cement. After about 10 minutes, we lifted it off. The cement would dry in the exact shape needed to seal the top but if the iron needed to expand more than the rocks, it would have the freedom to move.
(My hands are not exactly ladylike at this point!)
We have started on the front but cannot take a decent picture yet so you will have to wait for another post.
I wanted to use the old stove door and the first thing was to establish exactly where it had to go, and how to hold it solidly in place while we built the rest of the stove around it. Good job I have a rough plywood floor so I can nail things into it.
Thanks to muscle-man Mogens, I can incorporate some huge boulders into the design. Here is Mogens manouvering the stove base into place.
We had to build another scaffold to hold it. Just to be on the safe side we are going to wait two days before we remove the scaffolding. We will have to do that before we can start to build the other walls.
Each stage of the building needs several hours, sometimes days to dry. So this will be an ongoing project spread over several posts.