Finding coal in your holiday stocking is no joke in these times of economic turmoil.

But a bit of coal is more than welcome this year for the growing number of people who have returned to coal heat as a hedge against volatile oil and natural gas prices.

According to a recent article in The New York Times, the use of coal for residential heating hit a low of 258,000 tons nationwide in 2006 after years of decline, and then started to rise again.

"It jumped 9 percent in 2007, according to the Energy Information Administration," the Times reported, "and 10 percent more in the first eight months of 2008."

Lancaster County coal and stove dealers have seen the same trend in their businesses.

"Sales of alternative fuel stoves are up probably more than 10 percent," said Clair Bowman, a salesman at Bowman's Stove & Patio, Ephrata. That includes wood and wood pellet stoves as well as coal, he said.

Joyce Martin, co-owner of Martin's Ag Services, New Holland, estimates coal sales there have been up "maybe 12 to 14 percent" this year, but she said part of that was an influx of customers when one of her nearby competitors changed ownership.

Carl Garman, owner of Garman's Coal and Mulch Products, Manheim, crunched the numbers for his business and found coal sales up 8 percent for 2008 after an increase of 4 percent in 2007.

Like other local dealers, Garman attributes most of that increase to rising oil and natural gas prices during part of that time.

Robert Mellinger, owner of Elvin E. Mellinger & Son, Pequea Township, a family coal business since 1878, agrees.

Mellinger said he had one customer last summer tell him he could buy both a new coal stove and a winter's worth of coal for what he would have had to spend on heating oil for a year.

But that was when heating oil was more than $4 a gallon. Like prices at the gas pump, the cost of heating oil has plummeted since summer — to an average of $2.51 a gallon last week, according to www.homeheatingoilprices.com.

Still, with a ton of coal equivalent to 146 gallons of heating oil, according to the Times, that's more than $366 for heating oil at current prices compared with local prices of $220 to $240 a ton for coal.

"Coal is still less expensive, but you have to put a little work to it," filling the stoker and emptying the ashes, Mellinger said.

Nor is price the only motivating factor for people turning to coal to heat their homes.

Some people simply want to create a spot in their home where they can go when they want to warm themselves, Garman said.

Mellinger said he keeps his office heated to 68 with a coal stove. "But I can turn it up and make it go to 80 or 90," he said.

Others have philosophical reasons for making a switch.

"There's always a segment of society looking to go off the grid and not be dependent on foreign oil," said Jeff Stermer, of Stermer Bros. Stoves and Spas, Lancaster.

There are many options for doing that, he said, from furnaces to stoves to fireplace inserts, burning coal, wood or wood pellets.

It's not even necessary to have a chimney with the direct vents and power vents that are now available, Stermer added.

"In my own case, I heat my home with coal heat as much as possible," he said, although he also has a gas forced-air system that occasionally kicks on in the middle of the night.

"What you don't want to do is have it cycle on all the time," he said.

Stermer's approach is not uncommon. Cheryl Espenshade, owner of W.D. Espenshade, Elizabethtown, said the bulk of her customers use coal as supplementary heat.

This year, "there have been customers who haven't used it in years that have surfaced out of the woodwork," she said.

Wood pellet stoves have also become a popular alternative to heating oil, especially with people trying to get away from fossil fuels altogether.

"We've had a huge surge in pellet stoves," Bowman said. "They're a little more popular [than coal] because it's a renewable source of fuel."

But Espenshade, who sells wood pellets as well as coal, said there's been a shortage of pellets this year, and she's been seeing some of those customers switch to coal.

The cost of coal has also been rising, although the price is traditionally a lot more stable than oil.

Garman said his coal prices have gone up 20 percent in the past year, and some people have begun asking him when they will come back down like gas and oil prices.

"It don't look like there's going to be any break yet," he said.

With U.S. coal production falling from 1.16 billion tons in 2006 to 1.15 billion to 2007, according to the Energy Information Administration, at the same time that consumption has been going up, a significant drop in price is unlikely.

Residential heating accounts for less than a quarter percent of that consumption, so an increase in the sale of coal stoves probably will have little effect on price.

Generation of electric power, on the other hand, accounts for about 93 percent of consumption and has been rising nearly every year.

Still, Garman points out, the price of coal never skyrocketed like the price of heating oil did. If it had, coal would have been selling for $700 a ton last summer, he said.