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Friday, September 21, 2012

One more story from an email

I am looking at getting a combo wood and coal stove for next door. I do think I know how to heat and cook with coal, if I have to.
For the coal option for this stove, it calls for bituminous/anthracite coal, which I can’t recognize.
 
The Hemlocks has a coal seam about 1/4 mile away, and it always appeared to be high quality coal to me, but I don’t really know. We also have a low quality coal seam here, locally called “chicken coal”, and the seam I mention is much better than that. Chicken coal is a mixture of coal and clay, at least to me.

There was even a still there at the good seam, which used the coal for fuel, and a nearby sandstone spring for water. The remnants have long since been carried away by others, whom I happen to know, or at least one of them.

Anyway, if interested, I’d be glad to either guide you over there, or even pick some coal to show you at my house.

If interested, please give me a heads up so I can plan ahead for your benefit and time while you are in the area.

Anyway, any guesses/opinions are appreciated.

Clay Williams at the Hemlocks

PS For Bill and Sue, you’re invited too if you know anything about coal.

PPS One of my rooms in the main house has a coal fireplace, which has not been used for decades, but Americans used to warm themselves with it ages ago. It shares the same chimney which has a Mennonite built wood stove (years ago) on the other side. The EPA has since shut the fellow down, I hear. Whether it is the Feds or the State, I do not know.

PPPS When I cleaned out under the main house many years ago, there was a lot of coal, I presume delivered, which I got rid of somewhere.

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