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I am a great fan of baseball and firewood, so your anology works good for me. I agree with all you say about the different hardwoods for wood burning. On my lot I am fortunate to have lot’s of beech. Although thinning large beech can be challenging with it’s knarly, sprawling, twisting branches, cutting it allows me to save the much more valuable hard maple, yellow birch and ash. Once back at the landing spliting beech is not an issue with my wood splitter. The key with the other lesser firewoods is when you burn them. I to stack my woodpiles so that when January comes I’m in to the best. I always process a few popal blowdowns if there still solid enough to burn as the October nights get chilly. It takes the chill off but doesn’t drive you out sweltering. And finally, please if your going to cut a solid elm tree, don’t waste it in the woodstove, I’d love to use it in my woodshop

Have observed a “bee”, or impostor on my garden flowers.  It looks like a honeybee, but is almost twice as big.  It also has a large round head.Does anyone know what this is?  Thanks in advance.

Was totally stuck until I read this, now back up and rnunnig.

I agree w. Mark Hutchins, the smaller, dead, bark falling off, elm is my emergency wood in the spring. Burns fine, keeps me warm, just wish the smoke smelled better.

Beech is great, not as dirty as some of the “rough” barked trees. Can be a real pain to split, especially the butt end. I’ve made a few 150 lb blocks of kindling before I desingate it to the bonfire pile.

Black locust burns well, nice heat, the coals tends to pop when you open the stove door to reload the burn chamber. Sparks and embers flying out the door tend to get your heart going.

Ash and soft maple make up my “spring and fall” wood.

I do have a tough time burning bitternut hickory. Burns too slow in cold weather to keep the house warm without opening the draft up enough to burn up the grate. So my son gets all of it from my release and fence row cutting.

Ihave collected assortment of old 1@two man crosscut saws and would like all the knowledge i can get about filing, setting etc. I am a trail maintainer on the finger lakes trail and am trying to convince others to ditch the chain saws

I’m surprised that you did not reference the well known ‘Firewood poem”, author unknown, to me at least:
There is an old poem on firewood which to some extent holds true.

Beechwood fires are bright and clear
If the logs are kept a year,
Chestnut’s only good they say,
If for logs ‘tis laid away.
Make a fire of Elder tree,
Death within your house will be;
But ash new or ash old,
Is fit for a queen with crown of gold.

Birch and fir logs burn too fast
Blaze up bright and do not last,
it is by the Irish said
Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread.
Elm wood burns like churchyard mould,
E’en the very flames are cold
But Ash green or Ash brown
Is fit for a queen with golden crown.

Poplar gives a bitter smoke,
Fills your eyes and makes you choke,
Apple wood will scent your room
Pear wood smells like flowers in bloom
Oaken logs, if dry and old
keep away the winter’s cold
But Ash wet or Ash dry
a king shall warm his slippers by.

A firewood poem says this about elm;

Elmwood burns like churchyard mould,
E’en the very flame is cold.

This is really interesting. Thanks for the information!

We buy our firewood cut and split, so have no idea what we’re burning most of the time, although we can recognize a few pieces. We also use a wood gasification boiler to heat a 5,000-gallon water storage tank which then heats the house via radiant heating, so we need a different sort of burn than a wood stove. We can also burn softwood.

What we’ve learned is: Every load into the boiler has a different dryness quotient and BTU!

The absolute worst to split is tupelo (black gum) - run the other way if someone offers it to you. The guy who sold me my my first cordwood in New England must have recognized his chance to hide some in the load. In an attempt to split one, I buried a wedge in one end, then buried my other wedge in the opposite end without even the starting crack of a split.  Had to throw the whole log in my fireplace to get my wedges back.

That must be a reason one often sees ancient tupelos in red maple swamps, with no other trees that size - once they’re too large for rounds, forget it!

I burn most any hardwood and cut it in winter without sweat running in my eyes, mosquitos, black flied and deer flies.  On 60+ acres there is always plenty of freshly dead standing trees.  I skid logs over the snow and cut them up in my back yard.  The snow gets too deep for my tractor.  My land is wet so there is not much time to work without leaving ruts.

Years ago I burned a lot of elm.  The smoke stinks and the grain is like rope.  I bought a splitter along with three other guys, two have since died.
 
I like white oak best about when the bark starts to loosten.  Now there is plenty of ash.  I recently used a lot of poplar that was cut to clear for a wind tower.  It made good firewood the first year but rots quickly.  I don’t have any locust or hard maple in my Rotterdam woodlot but some in Purling.  I have burned quite a bit of sasafrass. I also burn apple and even storm damaged wheeping willow from my front yard but most of that went into my 100 yard range bullet stop.

If you look at heat value per pound as opposed to per cord you will see a somewhat different picture.  I do most of my splitting with a maul.  Anything that is too knarly to split with a second or third whack gets thrown aside for the splitter which I use a couple times a year.

I would add only one thing to the discussion.  I’m a strong advocate of drying wood for 2 years (maybe 1 and 1/2 with some species).  All the problems of creasote, chimney fires, and chimney cleaning costs are pretty much eliminated that way, plus I believe that you retain more BTU’s that way.  Wood that is not completely dry uses some of it’s own BTU’s to cook off the remaining moisture.  In my experience one year old wood just doesn’t perform as well.

I pretty much agree with most of comments.  Beech is wonderful firewood, although some of it can be tough to split.  With a wood splitter, it makes no difference.  Equal to rock maple I would think.  While green elm is everything you said, if it’s standing dead for a few years before it’s cut, you’ll find it’s a different wood indeed.  I once heated my house for the better part of a winter with a 4’ diameter elm that had been standing dead for a number of years.  I split all of it by hand and almost all it split well, some as good as ash.  My vote for worthless firewood is basswood.  You can sink a maul 1/2 way up the head without even starting a crack.  And it’s lighter than pine or poplar, I’m sure.

Hi Mary, we don’t see any reason not to eat them! They will probably be delicious!

Could you confirm that we are sending fuel oil to “Venezuela”?
I thought it was just the opposite: Chavez sent oil to the U.S. free of charge for use in low income housing units.  At least I saw an ad on tv about it. If it’s true, it certainly wasn’t widely publicized.
thanks.  nice article.

Believe it or not, I don’t mind a bit of poplar in my stovewood mix. It dries easily, splits nicely, stacks beautifully, and ignites quickly. It ain’t warm, but it’s bright, and I’ve got it by the wagonload.

I absolutely agree about the Elm - I had the same thing happen to me…I wondered if there was something wrong with the maul, but unfortunately, there was not.  Didn’t seem worth the effort.

I cut hornbeam rounds—up to 4 or 5 inches across, and sometimes even more—in June, then burn them when the cold weather comes.  They would probably be better if I let them sit a year (I can’t imagine they need a whole 1 1/2), but they do fine as I use them.  Last winter I used almost nothing but.

I was fishing lastnight with my children and boyfriend on the Missisquoi River her in Vermont and I was looking for frogs along the bank while my boyfriend was fishing and I spotted a crawfish and caught it. The kids were thrilled and wanted to keep it as a pet. I got curious and started checking along the entire bank with a flashlight and spotted them everywhere so I grabbed a bucket and gloves and caught about 50 in three hours. My boyfriend used a couple for bait and caught two huge fish right off the bat. The biggest fish I have seen in cauht in the river in my 30 years of life. Anyways after the night was over we packed up and I brought the crawfish home and put them in my kitchen sink for my children. This morning my oldest children got the idea to have me cook them and eat them so I did. I am just wondering if it is actually alright to eat them from the river? I know people eat them all the time in the bayou in Louisianna, but this is Vermont. Are they the same kinda crawfish or are they differant? I am just afraid my children and myself are going to get sick. Maybe I worry too much, but I would rather be safe and sure than have my children and myself in the hospital from eating the wrong food.

I am heartbroken over this.  I’ve noticed this year for the first time, the absence of the wood thrush’s song.  They are here - I’ve seen them.  But they aren’t singing.  They are doing their little chuck chuck noise and that’s about it.  Something is wrong.