Twenty years ago I was moving from sheepwagon to yert, from caretaker's cabin to tent, from camper to tipi... Round and round I went, living the simple life, with no power or water, and rarely a kitchen. Those were the days, footloose and fancy free... young and strong and brave.
The living was easy. There was no one to worry about except myself, no extra mouths to feed, nothing to tie me down. It was just me and my faithful companion Sancho, wandering the wilds of Montana and then Alaska, seeing what we could see.
Then I hit the magic age of 25, and decided it was time to set down some roots. I was tired of moving from place to place, and exasperated with having to ask the landlords if I could put in a garden or dig a hole or improve things in any way. Sometimes they only saw my improvements as detrimental to their vision.
By the time I found my land, I had perfected the one-pot meal, whether cooking over an open fire or a single burner stove. I had been living my yert the previous winter, complete with a wood cookstove from Costa Rica that was designed to put the heat out the stove pipe, not into the tent.
When I moved the yert onto my homestead, I gave the almost useless stove away and built a camp kitchen facing Castle Mountain. With a blue tarp for the roof, a bear-proof box for storing heavy stuff and the rest of my dry goods hanging from a high tree branch, all the cooking and meals were outdoors.
I vividly recall when my folks came to visit over the fourth of July, having Alaskan Pad Thai in the middle of black fly season. My Mom wasn't really that impressed to see me mix the flies that landed in the hot skillet into the simmering food. She kept a hand solidly clamped over her teacup to avoid invaders.
When I finally moved into my partially finished cabin in late fall, it seemed a unique luxury to have a kitchen of my own. Simplicity ruled all... a propane camp stove on a single counter, one cast iron skillet and one pot. Dishes were from the pottery studio where I worked in the winters, so I was really living large to have two of everything.
These days we live in the same cabin, which has expanded at least fivefold. I still have a single burner propane stove for heating a quick cup of tea or cooking a single pot meal in the summertime. But there's a exponentially improved dimension to our kitchen, an antique wood cookstove.
We drove it over the Al-Can some 8 years ago. Ben refinished it and installed it as a surprise for me one fall. Its a lovely thing to be able to bake real food in a real oven, heated exclusively with wood. We even think food cooked in a wood cookstove tastes better than meals heated in a gas or electric oven.
When cooking on and in a cast iron stove, cast iron cookery is your best friend. There's nothing that distributes and holds the heat finer than cast iron dutch ovens, pizza pans, pie plates and loaf pans. Of course we also cook on the surface of the wood stove that heats our cabin 11 months out of the year too, but that acts more like a slow cooker- what town people call a crock pot.
The cast iron wood cookstove is, in my besotted eyes, the #1 amenity in a homesteaders kitchen. At the peak of canning season I can cover the surface with two pressure canners and two open water bath kettles and get a ton of preserving done at one time, while jerky or herbs dry on racks and bread bakes in the oven.
I love my stove. It cost me $200 and it should last a lifetime... maybe several lifetimes, I don't know. And so should the pots and pans that go with it. I appreciate the sustainability of cast iron cooking. Stuff doesn't wear out and need to be replaced, and I never have to pay for electric or gas. Bring in some scrap wood and you're good to go.
Yeah, it takes some learning to be able to heat it quickly and manage that heat without dials and knobs. It takes time and energy to keep the woodbox filled with dry wood of the right size. But its a really fantastic addition to a quiet life tied closely to the land. I highly recommend it.