Northeast Iowa here... specifically, 30 miles south of the Minnesota border, about 60 west of Wisconsin. We normally don't even close the windows until the last week of September or first of October, but we closed all but one last night (and they're still closed). Predictions are for 30° by Saturday morning, which will kill what's left of the garden (the earliest I can remember). We usually light the first fire during the last week of October... last year it was mid-October... and unless the weather straightens out in the next week or so, I'm not so sure we won't fire-up before October this year.
I always try to hold off as long as possible... 'cause once ya' fire-up it pretty much means you're gonna' be burning every other night or so (the body and mind just likes that wood heat). I don't "look forward" to firing-up, it's just more work to me; load the box, clean out the ashes... and the worst part, cutting more wood to replace what's burned. I burn wood-for-heat simply because I have easy accesses to the wood (basically my back yard) and it saves me money. If I had to scrounge or drive for firewood... I likely wouldn't do it. Between helpin' granddad and dad as a kid, and burnin' since then, I've been burnin' wood-for-heat ( in some form or another) gettin' close to 50 years now... the novelty is gone.
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I still enjoy all of it. It's my sport, don't play golf or watch the big game on TV, don't hunt anymore, etc. Going out wooding, although it can be physically demanding most of the time, gives me sport plus it is practical.
I also have a mindset that anything I do to get me independent of the "man" and his scam economy is a good thing. I like going directly to what I need and eliminating as much of the "money" middleman as possible. Wood heat, garden, grow my own meat, etc, that sort of thing.
I know all of that isn't technically "pure", it still costs money to do all that, but I think you know what I am saying.
Eventually I would like to have enough solar PV to about eliminate a grid connection.
Ha, I should move out to the middle of east elbownia someplace and be a hermit curmudgeon....hehehehe
What I have now is an almost reasonable compromise to that I guess.