Before living in Maine I had  no idea what in the hell a wood stove was. Was I really that stupid for thinking it was a contraption that one might use to actually cook on?

For the uninitiated, historically – and even occasionally nowadays – a wood stove is actually outfitted for cooking. But as I learned in  the first week of my first  Maine winter, the roll of the so-called wood stove actually has nothing  whatsoever to do with food. it exists for one  reason: to keep you and your pipes from freezing and breaking, all the way from early November until mid-May.

Now, although the summer in Maine offers a slight break for its hard-working wood stoves, their location in the home as well as their general mass mean that, despite their lack of any real vernal utility, they become very much a component of the central living quarters of many Maine households. Hell, they almost become family.

It was this odd juxtaposition  of our own wood stove  right in the middle of our kitchen during the mid-70s temps of early June that inspired the following  ideas on how we might keep our reliable, sooty black beasts from falling into the pitiful neglect that they've been accustomed to in the summer months....