Bachelor Brothers Beat Cold Weather—and Heating Costs by Burning Wood
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Dennis (left) and Trevor Pegg who live north of Hayter are shown inside one of their well stocked granaries that are filled with wood. Photo in December 7 edition of The Provost News.
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Brothers Dennis and Trevor Pegg don’t mind if the cost of natural gas goes up—they continue to burn wood to keep their home warm and comfortable all winter long.
The two bachelors who live seven kilometres north of Hayter on the original farm where they grew up, sat down in their home with The Provost News editor to discuss their method of heating along with some other issues.
Although they used to spend a lot of time cutting trees in the area with a two-man saw and large homemade axes, they have now turned to chain saws and a mechanized splitter to speed up the process. The axes, made out of grader blades and honed to a sharpness similar to razor blades (similar to the log splitter) are now mainly a novelty.
The fall and spring seasons keep the pair active cutting firewood which presently fills part of a wall in their house near one of two stoves—and four and one half granaries full of the wooden fuel out back.
They’ve been heating with wood the last 15 years and before that it was coal.
The men keep the wood stoves heating the house so it’s not that cold in the winter. “Not below 60 . . . that’s fairly cool” to have it fall below that they say. In the winter they go to bed between 9 and 10 p.m. with the fire lasting until breakfast around 7 a.m.
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Since they don’t ask much what other people have to pay for natural gas, they are not sure how much money they save by not purchasing fuel for heating the house like most others across Canada.
The brothers use an estimated half dozen loads of a one ton truck worth of wood in a year, adding that they’ve gone through quite a lot of it so far since April was on the cool side.
Dennis (who has a twin sister) at 75 years old and Trevor at 73 look as though they could pass for a decade younger, help keep themselves fit with an active lifestyle during the winter gathering some wood and snowshoeing. In the summer they take great joy maintaining their fences up to high standards. “That is our pride around home” Trevor says as he takes The News writer out back. They are now retired from general farming and cattle but there are some neighbour’s cattle they allow on their land during summer.
They search out and burn white poplar trees—up to 25 and one half inches in diameter. Some people, says Dennis don’t believe the size of trees they find 40 miles away on land they can access south of Cadogan in an old swamp area—the same stand of trees that supplied wood for the famous Wilkinson and McCord ranch house in the early 1900s at Sounding Lake.
They won’t chop down birch “because it’s so scarce and it’s a beautiful tree” says Trevor, sitting in his kitchen area, after offering his guest some freshly produced carrot juice. Dennis adds though that the bark is good for starting fires.
The burning wood in the brothers’ stove is also used to heat water for both washing clothes and themselves. They have a small outdoor propane torch and a little camp stove to cook their homegrown vegetables.
Dennis has lived on the farm all his life, while Trevor following school in Stainsleigh, Hayter and Provost took a year off to drive an ice cream truck in the city. After their mother moved to the lodge in 1992 the pair found no need for a telephone—so they simply took it out. Do they miss the use of the phone? “We’re happy without it. We feel sorry for a lot of people who have it” Trevor replies.
Full story and photos in December 7 edition of The Provost News.
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