And before we knew it, the cold was working its way in and pushing the last bits of fall out. The snow would sprinkle a bit and then melt off, and I put all of my wishful thinking into staving the weather from dumping down snow.
As it turned out, a food network TV show was coming to our little town of Homer. The show was following a small group of food trucks. At each location, depending on the customers each truck got, a truck was eliminated from the running. I know, brilliant thing to have trucks running around the country causing people to assemble around them and then traveling on during a pandemic, right?
So nonetheless… Laura really wanted to go check it out. I eventually agreed. So when the “Day Of The Foodtrucks” was upon us, I decided it was a perfect opportunity to see if my servicing of Kalcifer had helped.
And it kicked off to a good start! The weather had opened up for the day of the food trucks, so it was a pleasant experience hanging out in Our Ohana and enjoying the fire as it got going.
Of course Josie insisted that “the best friends” should be able to come and hang out with us in our “special fort”.
… But They Never Seem To Hold Still At The Same Time.
Before long we headed to the first truck we were going to check out, which had pretty much parked at the base of the Homer Spit.
We took a moment and evaluated the scene. As someone walked by we observed the amount of food they were given, they carried two food trays each containing a measuring cups worth of food. (At the most!) Both dishes were centralized around the truck’s namesake, Some Like It Tot.
Then we looked up at the pricing of the food- and it was $18 for one! Luckily, none of it fell under our diet and we were not compelled to break it for what we were seeing.
Right next to the “food network” food truck was another local truck that was building up its own decently sized line. It was great to see a local vendor representing, and if you can’t see the pricing on the sign below, they were offering a $5 menu. Sweet!
We headed up to mid town Homer, and at Alice’s Champaign Palace the next food truck was an interesting combination of savory foods and sweets. Like burgers with donuts for buns. The prices were better than the last truck, but still nothing brought us to the brink of breaking our diet for the day.
The last location contained 3 more food trucks, closer to the bottom of Homer at the Chamber of Commerce. The prices were steep there as well, but we did find something interesting we could eat on our diet. So we waited patiently in our spaced out line, to have them run out of food for that option when we were finally second to the front! 😂
Overall, the great “Food Network Food Truck” hype turned out to be highly overrated. Oh Well! It was a nice reminder that when we went on our big escape in the next year and a half that we would get to try all kinds of new and different foods out there. Later we would find out that the food trucks had drastically raised their prices from what they had charged people in Anchorage. Gotta love that Homer tax!
But how did the fire do?
Alright, but in the end I still ended up fighting the fresh wood for the second burn. I ended up looking up the website for the company of the Kimberly Wood Stove:
https://www.unforgettablefirellc.com/kimberly-wood-stove/
I sent them an email asking if they might have any info to help with my situation. Within a day I had received a response, and a request to give them a call. The customer service agent over the phone was wonderful- but ultimately recommended that I get in touch with their specialist named Roger.
That afternoon, I was talking to The Man himself. Roger was super friendly and had some great input. It turned out that Roger was actually the creator of the stoves and the company! He helped me walk through about a half a dozen steps that would allow me to hopefully solve the burn longevity issue we were having with our fiery companion.
I will be working my way down the list of things that he recommended in the future, but the first and foremost was operator error. (Of course 😆) It turned out Roger’s approach was quite different to lighting the stove than the one we had understood to be correct.
It shouldn’t take much fuel to get it started. The process began with lighting up kindling only about the size of pencil thickness, and burning 2 cycles of that. Then load up the next round with wood the size of cigars, and burn a load of that. During this cycle the stove will get so hot it will completely burn the glass clean. (Which we have never seen it fully do) Once that has burned down just enough to fit the biggest piece of wood you can inside the stove, shove the wood in and let it burn it hot for about 10 minutes. Then back the flu shut to the point where it is almost completely closed and the glass will turn completely black. This is a good thing, if the stove is doing its job the secondary combustion will start burning all of that smoke and using it as fuel. It will also allow the piece of wood to burn for a lot longer.
The second primary thing he told me to do was close off the external air intake.
There was a city councilman in the Washington area that had been trying to push for external intake sources to become law on wood stoves around the time Kalcifer had been originally installed. The law had passed for the time being, but it was later found that especially in cold temperatures, the external air intake was extremely detrimental to the stove working optimally. So Roger told me to cap that thing off. (I guess again, because that is how I pretty much found it.)
Roger was extremely friendly and helpful, and told me to get a hold of him if I needed any more help. It was a fun and very enlightening experience getting to meet the creator of our stove! Way Cool! 😄
As I work my way through testing the stove and going through the steps Roger gave me I will update. Hopefully, it won’t take that many of the steps to get Kalcifer going just where we need him! ❤️🔥
So now we are into December, and the cold and the snow has cometh.
I’ve been cleaning off and driving The Ohana around, and she is holding her own in the snow like a champ!
We took some of the wood splits I’ve been hauling around that I already thought were small, and began the process of chopping them up into pencil and cigar thick pieces. Pretty soon we will do our next test burn and let you know how it goes. 🤞
On some fun side notes, while I was writing on this blog just the other day I awoke to find these right outside out window. It looks like a bear slept up against the wall outside from my desk the night before. I let the neighbors all know, the bear’s tracks were followed down and to the west from here before disappearing into the woods.
In November Wendy Lou had shared some fun updates on Serenity, check this out!
It looks like she built a roof for Serenity to shed her snow load for the winter! This had been a possible bucket list dream for us when we had her, so it is so awesome to see if finally happen for The Finest Ship In The ‘Verse! 😉
And that’s it for now! This post is actually a big deal in our world. 🌎 I started the blog right at the beginning of the year, and with that I had 3 years of history to catalog and write down to share with all of you. But with this post I am FINALLY CAUGHT UP to telling our tales in real time! So for now on, when we report our stories they will be as fresh as the life we are living! 😁
So with winter on, sadly, these posts will slow down. I will update you as soon as things happen with Our Ohana; whenever it is warm enough for us to go out and get some project time on her. 🥶
In the mean time, if you haven’t checked out the older posts and the history of our journey to getting to this point; please do! It just helps to explain how excited we are to break away from this cold Alaska one day.
And in the mean time, we are wishing all of you the best! Stay safe, happy, and soaking in every moment of beauty in this life. (Oh- and stay warm this time of year!) It’s been a strange year- but it sure has been an amazing one in it’s own ways as well!
Geoff & Laura Murphy 12/4/2020
Awesome job!