Two tons of coal were delivered today. Two tons. Sure sounds like a heap o' coal. And it is, though not quite as mammoth a mound as the phrase 'two tons' conjures up in the imagination.
I moved into this house three years ago this last July, knowing I didn't want to pay heating bills to the local oil company throughout the long northern Vermont winter. The hunt for alternative heating possibilities began almost immediately, my primary focus being wood heat. I snooped around shops that dealt in woodstoves, finding nothing that felt right. Until I found myself checking out a coal stove in a Montpelier store. The demo model was on sale, as I talked to one of the sales people -- a grizzled old guy who heated his home with coal -- it sounded more and more intriguing. Contrary to the image I'd always had of the great London fogs of the early 20th century, a chronic phenomenon fed in part by the widespread use of coal for heat, this guy told me that anthracite, harder than bituminous, burned as cleanly as wood. I took a bit of time to do online research which seemed to back up his claims, before I knew it, I'd purchased the stove and they were dragging the bugger into my basement.
It's a whole different thing from wood, this heating with coal. Takes a bit of time to get the stove cranking, but once a load has established itself, it burns with a concentrated intensity that produces strong, sustained heat, hours and hours and hours worth. During my three years living in Seattle, I heated my little house on the east side of Capitol Hill with a woodstove, a Fisher model that I installed in the living room, feeding it scraps from construction sites. That house literally had no insulation -- heat filled the rooms then seeped right through the walls and windows, escaping to the great outdoors with little hindrance. My Vermont house is insulated and reasonably tight, as it needs to be out here in the sub-arctic hills, but it's twice the size of the house in Seattle. I have to shut the door to the two big rooms at the far end of the house to keep the temperature in the rest of the living space comfy, and then it stays authentically comfy, often coasting up into the mid to high 70s.
But I blabber. I heat with coal.
That first winter was an experience. Dealing with the stove felt at times like a genuine chore, but it churned out heat and burned cleanly, both inside the house (no dust) and in the chimney (no build-up, as opposed to wood's creosote accumulation). The next year I was in Madrid, and after some initial struggles, Kit, the woman staying here, got the routine down and came to love warm house/lack of oil bills. (Two tons of coal lasts most of the winter -- cost: less than $400.) I wound up in Madrid for most of last year as well, and in that time the coal distributor here changed the type of coal they sold, exchanging a clean product for a dirty, dusty one. Trying to keep the living space dust-free drove Kit crazy, she complained about it, loudly and frequently. My experience had been different, I didn't know what to say. When I returned from Madrid this last April and found myself in the Winter That Wouldn't Go Away [see journal entries from April and May], I experienced the dust for myself. So that when I called the coal company in June to begin the process of buying two tons' worth for this coming winter, I let the guy know I needed a cleaner product.
Weeks later -– today -– the coal company truck shows up with the new stuff, manned by the owner and his helper. The guy who runs the company is a major talker, a beefy guy with a gut that hangs over his belt, thick longish hair on the sides of his head and a thinner, wispier display up top. The kind of talker who gets going to the point where you find yourself saying, "Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Sure. Uh-huh," with little room to contribute anything more. Not a bad guy at all, but a world-class talker who builds up a head of steam in no time flat.
They back the truck up to the garage, set up a long, heavy-duty motorized conveyer mechanism, extend a ramp from the truck down to the conveyer. The bed of the truck slowly angles up, coal begins pouring into the conveyer, then to the rear of the garage. Myself and the owner's helper stand by the coal, spreading it out with shovels as it flies into the pile. It's a loud process -– genuinely, eardrum-assaultingly loud, and once the load has all found its way to the rear of the garage and the conveyer is shut off, the sudden quiet is startling.
The owner of the company and I went back and forth during the summer about the question of cleaning up the product, and he's now experimenting with oiling the coal prior to delivery. It already gets washed, pre-delivery, in an attempt to cut down on dust -– they're now also pouring a solution of thin, light oil on it. I'll be curious to see the result.
When the truck finally rolled off down the hill, it seemed to signal the first, distant steps of the approaching cold season.
The day: beautiful, with brilliant September sunshine and a chilly, gusty wind, leaving me warm at some moments, cold at others. The slow shift to autumn is well underway -– seasonal neighbors are migrating south for the winter. My uphill neighbors are gone -– the wife and daughter, anyway. The husband, Howard, will be bolting this Sunday. Folks will come up for the colors, and then life up here will gear down for the return of winter. The weather forecasters sent out mixed messages about tonight, some predicting a touch of frost, others talking about temperatures in the 40's. Felt simpler to bring some cold-sensitive potted plants into the kitchen for the night, just in case, so that's what I've done. Tomorrow they'll go back out to the stoop.
Though the robins are long gone, a few songbirds still linger, and late this afternoon I heard one of the local hummingbirds making the rounds between the impatiens plant hanging off to one side of the back door and the hummingbird feeder that hides in the lilac bushes. They'll probably be out of here soon, off to kinder winter climes.