I have a list of worst fall chores, and sweeping the chimney clocks in at number two.
I close the woodstove on the last fire in May and don’t open it again until the chimney must be swept in dreaded October. I cart a ladder onto the roof, lean it against my stove pipe, and use the eight-foot pole with the wire brush to steel bristle the creosote down the stovepipe into the firebox. I wear an old blue Covid mask to keep the black soot from my throat, and I can be heard grumbling under the mask about what I think of this job.
Once down from the roof, I shovel and sweep and bucket the black creosote from the firebox. Living somehow in the powdery black soot are the zombie stink bugs that came down the chimney in September just to make this job worse. This year I wore a miner’s headlamp as I swabbed out the soot, and when I shined the…
