Cleaning the Cookstove, Part II - January 10, 2025 @goldenoakfarm

I woke at 3AM on Friday morning and couldn’t get back to sleep so I got up at 3:45AM and got my post up. At 6AM I fed the cat and started work on the grills and oven bottom that had soaked all night in the cleaning solution.

It hadn’t worked terribly well and I ended up scrubbing with steel wool to get the stuff off as much as I could. I had also finished the glass for the door first.

I had to stop at 7:30AM to pull up the shades and do the milk order. I had just finished that when my helper friend arrived at 8AM. We went to work on the oven parts not finished on Thursday and then got the doors to the ovens back together with a lot of trial and error.

We had gotten the control knobs off and he scrubbed them up while I cleaned up the mess where they went.

He figured out how to get the whole broilers out and started cleaning them.

I worked on the trays for the broilers. Then we got them all put back together.

I collected the burners from beside the masonry heater and started repairing and inserting them again. I was delighted to find them all working. But the left back one has a badly distorted ring and can’t be used. So I fixed it so it won’t light until I can find a new ring for it.

While my helper ran the vacuum around, I washed up the thermometers and salts and peppers and the stove was finished. Boy does it gleam in whatever light is available! Only one small problem, one of the lock washers for the handles broke, so we will need to get some spares.

I next spent half an hour cleaning up the awful mess we’d made of the kitchen.

I had half an hour after he left around noon to eat lunch and get ready for the event at the Senior Center. I had 5 minutes before I thought the van would arrive, so I cleaned the cat box. Of course he came early and had to wait until I’d finished.

This is the same historian that did the Christmas History in New England in December.

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He had a lot of interesting stories and photos of interesting stone work that he had found all around our area. He had done a lot of the stone work at Old Sturbridge Village when he worked there.

I got home after 2PM and Tom was there. He was installing the software for the Spooky2 Rife machine and then he taught me how to use it, sorta. In any event, I took lots of notes so I can at least do the tiny bit he set up for me. He says it runs for 10 days before we can change the program. This first program is a detox one. So we’ll see if I have any Herx reactions to it.

Once he left, I was so exhausted. I just sat for a while, heated up leftovers in my really clean kitchen while my brother made himself a stirfry supper on the clean stove. I got the wood stoves going and watched a movie and went to bed at 8PM.

On Saturday we’ll see how I am after this really hard week. I hope to get the recycling mess cleaned up and maybe put away the wreathes that have been hanging by the wood stove since Tuesday. It’s to snow all morning, so I will have to sweep walks and steps later in the morning.