My carbon footprint... wood heat, rocket mass heaters and good food

Hi All; Happy winter.  For years now I have felt like we have a low carbon footprint compared to the average american...  We make all our electricity ... our water is  artesian gravity  fed to the house. We grow as much of our food as we can , we respectfully harvest deer & elk in season. We raise our own pork. We drive economical vehicles (well except the old 4 wd truck) All told, we try to give back as much as we take from our environment... This morning i'm outside enjoying the day ... I fire the smoker up with dry maple wood , to cook a wonderful pork roast that has been sitting all morning with a heavenly rub on it... hmm good...  I look over at the studio / green house ... nothing but heat shimmers from our RMH... I look over at the cabin and see blue smoke rising from the regular wood stove... and then ... I look at my smoke shack... Smoke pouring from every direction .... OH WELL so much for that low carbon footprint I thought I had...

You are still doing better than most in my opinion.  If you want to go even further possibly a solar cooker?  I have been looking pretty hard at one of those for some time now.  It may happen soon.

Can you combine your indoor heat with a cooking function?

There was a rocket powered smoker built at Wheaton Labs a while ago. I don't have details on it, but I would guess that it makes the heat efficiently, and just enough smoke to do the smoking job, via chips or whatever placed in the smoking chamber below the meat.

Hi Jeanine:  Here in the pacific north "wet" a solar cooker would have limited uses... We call our drainage "FOG" creek ! The sun will be shining at 5000' but here at 2600' nothing but fog until 4:30 pm when it clears and sun shines for 30 minutes... then clear and freezing cold until 7:00 am when the fog bank moves back in ! Its not always like that , but often enough during the winter . However when its acting like winter outside (below zero) we cook indoors on our great majestic wood cook stove . After a few hours, you literally open a window to cool off (at -7). I can't smoke meat or cheese on it so its uses are limited as well (when its +30 outside you don't want to use it ! )                             Glen; There is a plan afoot to replace my sagging smoke shack with a gazebo ... this spring,   all along I had planned on a small rmh to sit on while cooking... now I'll have to think about this rocket smoker ... not sure at what temp wood will start too smoke, but I'll need to do some testing to find out !  Maybe an all brick rmh similar to a Russian masonry stove, with an arched oven chamber that gets hot enough to smoke wood.  Possibly a trip to wheaton labs is in order to see what they created... after all its only hour and a half drive away !    EDIT)  After a little looking on site I discovered that matt walker built the smoker at the lab and apx one month ago paul posted a video of it. Between watching the video and reading the posts accompany it  , I won't need to visit wheaton labs (at least not to see the smoker)  very nice simple set up ! Hats off to matt again!                                                                                                                                                              

love it want one

Hi David: 30 years ago I "rescued" that cook stove from a turn of the century homestead ! I did have the property owners permission... Sitting in a clearing within the remains of a trapper cabin was the great majestic ! Must admit it didn't look so majestic at the time ! The feet , the warming ovens and the hot water tank were all beyond my repair but...  the rest was certainly salvageable. It took quite a bit of gentle persuasion to remove it from the cabin (the roof was caved in) More work to load it and unload at our cabin (circa 1930) but it has had a loving home ever since !  A few years after saving it, the old trapper cabin burned down ! Glad i found and rescued the majestic first !

I had a similar one years ago I obtained in a similar way bit younger a 1947esse  no moving parts lol should last for ever . The only thing wrong was my then wife broke the mercury thermometer ;-( She still uses it

i was wondering if a solar oven works well.
if it does, it would be great to reduce all those carbon from cooking too

wait i just thought of something... what about cooking at night..
hmmm the battery packs i was thinking of are getting more and more attractive.

Hey Dennis; Yes , solar ovens work great... as long as the sun shines... in my opinion they won't work well at all in the dark ... just my opinion mind you... Maybe your wanting to cook by battery power ?? Let us know how that works out for you...