So on M.D. Creekmore’s blog, he did a great! review of this little stove and it sent me on the hunt to find out more about this stove, I read another five reviews from different folks, and checked out the company that sells them.

I was impressed that when you get one, they send a second stove to a person in need in a third world, when you can give a someone else a helping hand at the same time as getting something for your own families use, its just a “Good Thing”

The service was good and I was surprised that in less then a week, my stove was dropped off at the door.. Now its 27 pds in weight which will surprise you cuz its does not look that big until you go to lift it.. It does appear very well made and I hope to get a good number of years out of it.

So for my first “test” I went the hard way, I was only willing to start a fire with what I could in fact find in my front yard and matches, this proved to a tiny bit harder and took longer then I expected as most of my fuel was a little damp but once I got it going well, the water really did come to a boil in a very short time and the heat that little stove put out is excellent. I was very pleased with how little wood it really took to get that water boiling.

My second fire in the stove was to cook supper with, and I did it with more careful planning and dry wood, I used some dryer lint to help get it started and it caught right away, I can see and agree with everyone that having the little metal grate wood feeder is a great idea..

Now it took very little time to figure out how to get a cool heat and a fast year but I had a little more trouble working on a nice steady med heat, I will try again next with charcoal and then with dried cowpatties (watch for it to have its own post). One of the perks of this little stove is that you can use different sources of fuel with it.

I fried up some bacon over it, and it again impressed me at just how quickly it heated and cooked the food.. one of the claims was that it produced very little smoke, I did find that it smoked a bit on my first try but I have to agree that the second time with dry wood, it was impressive at how little smoke it gave off, but that bacon sure smelled good 🙂 Once it was finished I took out some of the fat and threw in cut off the cob fresh corn to fry up as a side dish, and it did a lovely job on it.

I will be looking forward to trying a few different things cookwise on this little stove,  I have a few different cast iron pots that I would like to try a few things on it, including to see if I can make some flapjacks on it, quick breads are one of the things that if you don’t have a oven, (power out) that need to be able to be made up.. now if its summer, you can use a solar oven but in our cold Canadian winters, you had better have a different plan, I will also do a post on how this stove holds up to cooking in winter time.

My next challange is going to be trying to can a little something in a hot water bath using coal, as I figure it should provide the most stable heat for the learning curve on this one, I am a little leary that it will prove that the size of the oven that burns will be a issue but I still want to try it at least one, I expect that my little potbelly cast iron stove is the better choice for outdoor canning, as it can take a proper typical peice of wood to give a longer burn time, but we will see.

Note: I did not get this stove for free to write about it, I paid full price for it and have no ties to the company etc etc.