Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living Firewood stash

How many years forward do you cut your wood ?

I have some elm that is going on the third winter and it is just starting to get a little soft. A few years ago the local utilities were cutting back easements and a lot of folks don't need/ want the trees. Being the opportunist that I am, I scavenged up a lot of free wood. The first winter , the elm was still to wet to burn. Last year the winter was pretty warm and we didn't burn a great amount.

I fired up the fireplace last night for the first time this year. The wood is burning ok but I doubt the btu value is very good. The walnut I cut at the same time is still rock hard.

Hardwoods are pretty scarce in these parts but if cut green i season Fir and Tamrack two years...
Even the dead stuff the forest service allows us to cut gets at least a year...

i heat my camp exclusively with wood. i usually have 2 years of burning wood stacked and 2-3 years of rounds cut and covered. i rotate it through the wood crib every year from left to right. i have about 10 cords or more of logs down that i need to do something with this winter/spring before it starts to go punky. gypsy moths made sure i had enough wood for a decade or more.

Everything I have was live when cut. I am new to burning wood so we are still learning. At first, everything I cut, I split and that may be my problem. I have a lot of the elm still in the rounds. I tried to split all the bigger stuff -20-30" rounds right after I got it home. When the wedge hit it, it was like a sponge being squeezed. All of the elm rounds are still solid in the center. I have all the wood on pallets also.

I've used wood 3-4 years old that was fine if kept covered and dry. I try to stay a year ahead. I've got enough for this season and maybe next year. It depends on how cold it is this winter. Getting a late start. It has been so hot tonight is the 1st fire of the season.

All depends on the type of wood. Oak is full of water and needs two years split and stacked to fully season. Ash is quite dry when green and only needs 4-6 months split and stacked.

Elm splits best when you can let it dry until the bark just begins to slip. It also splits better from the outside in. Split it 3-4" in from the bark, all the way around, then start going closer in toward the center. Never split the center.

I never had a problem with oak, ash, locust, or walnut drying for one year.

Lots of birch and tamarack around here. The logs I store off the ground and the birch logs I saw a line through the bark lengthwise to help drying I also cut into the larger birch logs at firewood length about half way through to keep the logs drying. Birch bark is almost completely water proof and the logs will rot from the inside out. These logs are a couple of years out.

Seems so simple but I would had never thought of those things.

It is amazing the things you can still learn each day you live.

Elm is way down my choices for firewood. Twisted grain makes it hard to split, takes forever to dry, and stinks some when burned. Free wood is nice, but you might want to look for some better stuff.

Sometimes you don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Free is free.

Hell ya....I cut up a big ol Cotton Wood (arguably the worst fire wood ever) that had drifted down the river last summer...
I get a lot of wood that way...If I can back my truck up to it I'll scavenge it for the stove in my shop...even Cotton Wood...

You burn what you have. I'm trying to figure out which species and size gives me the highest btu of heat for the least amount of btu expended harvesting and processing. Right now I'm gravitating towards mid sized birch and tamarack. The aspens and pines are fine but fall a little in heat for effort.

Hackberry or something in the ash family ?

Ignorance is bliss. A couple from a big city rented a local tavern with the option to buy discovered they need to fire up the outdoor wood stove after they saw their first LP fuel bill.

I was in the establishment one day for lunch and the subject came up and I told him I have a huge pile of Cottonwood tops they can cut and haul. They cut into that pile for two years and were tickled to death.

Yikes.....I'll burn just about anything in my shop stove but I can't imagine feeding an outdoor stove Cotton Wood....

Course...if you don't know any better and have plenty of it I guess you could get by....

Free is free, and available is another factor. I scavenged a bunch of wood off a job that had some clearing to it. One elm, but several river birch, sycamore, poplar. And a couple I couldn't identify. No evergreens, so I cut and split it all. Light wood, easily not as heavy as oak. But it burns! My wife is home all day, so she can keep feeding the stove.

When I lived in Colorado in a house with only wood heat, it didn't take me long to learn to bypass cottonwood and elm. Hard to split, burns poorly, stinks and you can durn near freeze to death on the heat it puts out. Not to mention tons of ash to clean-up. The elm and cottonwood both burned thier best after 3 years in the back of a dry barn, and that wasn't very good.
I was fortunate to have access to lots of dead aspen, pinions, junipers, cedars, scrub oaks, ponderosa pine and coal. The most seasoned the live stuff ever got was about a year and did fine, except maybe for a little extra creosote cleaning.

Around my place it is paper birch and tamarak(larch). Both are softer hardwoods with about the same btu rating/cord. By weight wood is all about the same. There is quite a bit of scrub hardwoods e.g. hawthorn that is a dandy burner but is brushy and doesn't yield much for the effort. I don't have fir on my place which has a good yield per tree. Aspen is easy because it doesn't have many branches, splits easy but takes a while to cure. I don't mess with birch, aspen or pine with any heart rot. The punk takes forever to dry and burns with the heat of a kleenex. I pick the trees that appear to be stressed or funky shaped but that aren't too far gone with a lot of soft center. I recently cut a 36" tamarack slash that was about 40' tall and the top 60' had broken off due to multi tops. The slash was still living but there was a 8" rotted center but the outside is solid. This is easy splitting and yields nice big rectangular blocks that are easy to stack. I have one big 100' grand fir that is dying but has a million branches and looks like a lot of work for my lazy azz. It burns like lodgepole which is fine not the greatest but ok.

Doug Fir and Big Leaf Maple.