I remember the times when in winter our fireplace burned 24/7. The village was new, and we had no electricity for three years (the concrete poles and power lines were not built right away). Well, there were two wood-burning stoves in the house, and a large wood-burning fireplace in the living room. The stoves were heat-intensive with a large number of turns, so in winter it was enough to light them once a day, and the fireplace burned constantly. True, we never left it unattended, someone was always nearby. The fuel was usually not good firewood, but free stumps that I uprooted anywhere in the village (it was work, and no one needed stumps).
They burned slowly, shining a soft light into the living room.
In general, without electricity, it was some kind of Middle Ages, water was taken from a well, using a log. into which a rotary key was driven, a kind of, I don’t know, stick, which was once used to start old cars a long time ago. That is, I turned this handle, and a bucket of water rose from the well.
The well is still in use, although now there is an electric pump with a check valve.
There was plenty of firewood here, but I just needed something to do with these stumps, so we dried them in the sun, and then broke them into pieces and burned them as fuel in the fireplace.
We often cooked food on firewood, too. Although we had a gas stove that ran on a replaceable propane cylinder.
The lighting was especially funny - most often it was either candles or kerosene lamps, the design of which has not changed, most likely, for two hundred years. They are still produced like this and many lovers of country recreation use them.
