Those readers who live in the country or in a single family home will understand what I am about to describe. Apartment dwellers, maybe not so much. When I've been out of the house all day and I arrive home I expect the house to be warm. At least warmer than the outside temps. It is, after all, November. It is cold outside. Anyhow, I trundle into the house with the 'puter case, purse, insulated mug in arms and miscellaneous effluvia trailing behind. I start dumpin' stuff and notice that it is chilly, so I turn up the thermostat and head back out to my little bitty truck to get the groceries out of the back. DG arrives home after I've figured supper out and asks if I turned the thermostat up? Yep, I answer, noticing that I'm still wearing my coat. DG wants to know if I JUST turned it up. I growl at him, “geeze, no, I turned it up when I got home from work.” At this point I notice that it is still cold in the house. Shit, shit, shit. Oops, sorry.

My smart, mechanical, efficient husband, the door guru, is allergic to diesel fuel. We have a fuel oil boiler in our ancient farm cottage. Fuel oil = diesel fuel. Just the facts, ma'am. Down the basement goes the DG. An hour or so later, after miscellaneous rattles, bangs and thumps, a very dirty DG emerges from the basement. He cranks the thermostat up and we hear the boiler start. Whoo Hoo! The man is good. There ensues much much washing with stuff in a big orange container called GoJo. Tomorrow he will clean the burners on the boiler, but we will be warm today. It is SOOOO handy to be married to a mechanic. There are really few lousier feelings than a cold house that you have no way to warm. Here at BFS we do have a backup. When corn is cheap, we burn it for heat. The corn is not dry enough to burn or even to pick yet so that wasn't an option.

There is some kind of weird oxymoronic irony here – we burn corn for heat, we eat or drink corn syrup in darn near everything processed, we process corn for ethanol, we feed corn to cows (which by the way, makes the cows sick), chickens, pigs and other animals. Corn is HARD to grow profitably. It is a big feeder and hates weeds. I'll stop now.

Back to the point of this post; I love hot water heat.  It is (when it works) even, non drafty and long lasting heat.  Heat is wonderful. However you get it, heat is wonderful when it is cold outside.