Cooking Wood Stoves

Being prepared with a wood cooking stove and wood for burning during a long term emergency is something not thought of often.  If all sources of heat and electricity is off for an unknown long period of time because of some disaster, it would be well to have a wood burning cook stove for cooking and a source of heat if it was cold.  If you had storage of propane, kerosene, or some other fuel, it might be more wise to save it for lanterns for lighting your dwelling place instead of heating and cooking.  You would run out quickly otherwise if your use it for heating.  If wanting to buy a wood stove, it would be more practical to buy a cooking wood stove where it could be utilized for duel purposes of heating and cooking.  There are many different designs and choices of a  wood stoves to choose from if wanting to purchase one.  From the pictures here you can see the different options of stoves.  It would be good to have an idea of what you want in a wood cook stove.  Options like having included an oven in the stove for baking, or lots of room on the stove top range for multiple cooking if having to feed lots of people.  Also, how big is your place to keep warm?  Would you need just a small stove for a small dwelling or a large wood stove for a large home?  Or maybe how efficient is the stove in maintaining its heat for long periods of time?  Would you want a stove that could easily be moved outside of your dwelling place for those the summer times when the outside temperature is too hot for cooking inside?  Solar ovens might be an option for the summer days. 

Having a cooking wood stove without wood would obviously be useless.  How much wood to get would be according to how big your stove is and where you live.  If you live in a moderate season where maybe five months of winter was normal and you had a good cooking wood stove to use for heating and cooking, then it might be around four of five cords of wood to gather for each year of use. It just all depends on what your situation is.  If in question, find someone in your local area that uses firewood to heat there homes and they could give you a good estimate of how much you would need. Most arborist tree trimming companies have fire wood for sale if you are not cutting it yourself.

When storing wood that isn't under shelter, you would want to cover it with tarps making sure they are tied down good  to keep the wind and weather from ruining them.  You should also remember that if you have cut down your own trees, you will need to allow the wood to dry for five to six months before using. There are ways to drying your wood more quickly by putting your wood in a green house for a month or so.  It will dry pretty quickly that way.  If wanting to test its dryness for use, you can buy a wood tester for moister content  that would show you.  Most wood, when dry, will crack and the ends of the logs and be much lighter in weight.  If giving the time to dry, it will be ready to use when needing it.

Learning how to cook on a wood cook stove can take some time in learning by experience.  Most our ancestors learned how and have passed it down from mother to daughter but because of our modern age most of us will have to learn from our own experience. It  would be wise to buy a temperature gage for your stove to help in your cooking.  Also it would be wise to practice cooking on it at good times so you will have some ideas of how to do it when the hard times come.

If you are in a situation that you are having to leave and live in tents, you wouldn't be able to haul your big wood burning cook stove with you.  On the market there are specially designed wood cook stoves in different sizes that are light in weight and can be assembled and disassembled for use.  Some of them have accessories that can be attached to them such as hot water tanks for your hot water use.  They also have been designed to be used in canvas tents made for that purposes.  That can be bought at real reasonable prices compared to your large cooking wood stoves.