firewood

This is firewood time of year.

We live in a time warp where we heat our house with a smallish wood burning stove, and cool it with a small fan. When I built the house it was the very best "renewable" idea out there, not I am not to sure, but I have to live with what I have.

If I wanted to go cut mountain wood, this is the right time to begin planning. Likely I’ll do neither.

A cord of good fir or even pine (we don’t have anything much in line of hardwoods in our forests).

Sometimes I buy wood, orchard wood being my favorite, but this time I have enough in stock to take us through this year easily. One friend gave us a trailer load of end cuts from his building project, another gave us a big pile of dimension lumber from his remodel.

I pulled the nails, stacked the nice fir boards (hard to get good fir studs any more), and cut the rest into firewood.

Our acre has a LOT of trees growing, but most are not very good as fire wood. Russian Olive, which grows like the weed it is, is not a great firewood.

This morning it is cool as I sit in my chair writing. Before too long, my morning ritual will include building a fire.

The trick is to make a hot fire in the morning, that warms the house but does not produce very much smoke. That is a skill that few consider useful any more!