My 500 lb Cast Iron Tchochke

I have a heart's desire sitting on my screen porch right now. When I was a little girl I always thought that one of the coolest things in the world to have would be a wood fired cookstove.

And now I have one... a beautiful "Happy Thought" six burner. It has a warming oven above and is a classic cream and green.

The problem is... it isn't an air-tight. If I tried to heat my cabin with it I could pour wood into it by the truckload and either be roasting or freezing as it roared through the hardwood. It's also too big for the tiny twenty by twenty one foot log portion of my house. It's dangerous. I'd have to contrive to put it in the middle of the room to fire that sucker up without my insurance company, and local fire departments having conniption fits.

It weighs five hundred pounds [roughly] and needs to have a couple of pieces of cast iron bolted back on. You can't weld cast iron... at least not these chunks.

At the moment it deserves better than to be a sideboard and potting bench. I should sell it. I should sell it... But. Its my Happy Thought. Sometimes I think I keep it for the name alone.

But.

I tell myself that if I put a summer kitchen on the back of this place I could use it there. But.

But it makes no sense for me to keep it. I like it. I've had it. I should let it go. But it makes me smile when I look at it. But.

So my thoughts go round and round. Until I figure it out I have a five hundred pound tchochke sitting on my front porch.