Clan Cornelius heats solely with wood. I love it. I love the scent of pine and juniper in the woodbox; I love the glow in the woodstove.
A couple of years ago, before we moved into our present abode, the owner took down half a dozen good-sized ponderosa pines that were impinging upon the drain field. Bummer about the trees, but… They were cut up into rounds and this summer and fall I hauled them up the property (we live on an acre) and stacked them for splitting. Coincidentally, two of my friends offered up wood for the taking, so I’ve added a couple of truckloads of mixed pine and juniper.
An economist would tell me that all the time and work that goes into heating with wood — hauling, stacking, splitting — makes it a grossly inefficient way to generate energy. But that’s why they call it the dismal science. I enjoy splitting wood and I love listening to the stove crackle while I read or peck out this post.
It’s Stuff That Works.
Spurge Cochran says
Sitting by my fire as I read this. Wood heating all my homes for 42 years..
JimC says
Right on.
Finn says
Try “vipukirves ” (leveraxe ) from Finland if you want to do it easy way….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jDR_2Zsr40
JimC says
You Finns own the woodpile.
deuce says
I’ve been cutting wood for a month, but did my first splitting today. A big chunk of hackberry about 3ft tall and about 2ft across. It took three wedges. Damn it feels good. Some solid exercise and great anger management. Still haven’t had to burn anything yet. Too mild. And that’s a good thing.
JimC says
Yeah, more people should take out their anger and frustration on a chunk of hackberry instead of spewing on social media. Make the world a better place.
Davide Mana says
We used to heat with wood in winter – my father loved to take care of the fireplace – but it turned out to be extremely anti-economic.
With the 600/800 bucks necessary for a winter supply, I could heat my house using gas heaters for two years solid, and save some.
And nobody hereabouts offers wood for the taking.
But we’ve made a little wood for the holidays – we’ll put a fire in the fireplace for Christmas and New Year’s eve.
JimC says
Believe me, I recognize that my way of life is a privilege. An earned privilege, you might say, but a privilege nevertheless. Part of my list of things for which to be grateful.
deuce says
I understand that wood-burning isn’t feasible for a lot of people, but that’s not my situation. I have about a half mile of quality trees on my place growing along my property line. Plus, there’s an amazing amount of good, seasoned wood just lying in ditches. By law, nobody owns it. I just stop and toss it in the truck. I help the road aesthetics AND drainage.
You don’t need to pay gym if you’re getting your wood the old-fashioned way. Figure that into the overall cost. After all of my equipment/fuel expenses are figured in, I save at least $50 a month, not counting non-existent gym fees.
JimC says
I haven’t belonged to a gym in years. Between kettlebells, hiking, tennis and hauling and splitting wood, I get plenty of exercise.
Betty says
Watch-it. You may get the save-a-tree folks on your neck.
I have heard the US has more trees now than we did 150 years ago: Second growth everywhere that had been denuded for winter firewood, farmland, crossties and houses; not to mention the thousands of acres of wood farms.
Our general antipathy to hard work and paying exorbitant prices for firewood, plus brainwashing about carbon emissions and “going green” instead of using paper, has resulted in a peculiar economic activity. Trees farmed in Louisiana are milled to powder and cast into pellets, then carried to England by cargo ship, where the pellets are ground again, cast into smaller pellets then transported to a power station and burned. To produce electricity.
Every step of the process relies on fossil fuels (unless they have covered Louisiana, too, in monster wind turbines and I have not heard about it).
Personally, I love my fire in my handsome pellet stove. No smoke in the house. Nothing but ashy powder in the pan to clean up. No endangering any body parts if you have a back strong enough to hoist a bag of pellets. At least my pellets come from Oregon straight to California with no stops for grinding or re-grinding.
I believe it is in our DNA to want to warm ourselves in front of a wood fire even if our backs are cold. Cooking over one also has its charms. Fake gas logs do not cut it. As for central heating, patooey. May you have a long healthy life furnishing yourself with firewood. And take care with those long-handled instruments.
JimC says
In our neck of the woods, I’d bet that wood burning is a negative-carbon activity. There’s plenty of dead-and-down to cut, and there’s little of the transport cost in fossil fuels you describe so well. I am not a radical of any stripe on energy issues — though I have to say that ripping the tops off of venerable old mountains for the sake of coal bothers me a lot. ALL forms of energy have their costs and impacts. Wind turbines kill birds indiscriminately. Dams for electricity are bad for rivers. I suppose that passive solar is pretty low-impact, but those panels still have to be manufactured, and it’s unlikely that solar will take up much of the load any time soon. Hydrogen fuel cells have huge potential, but that seems slow to get off the mark.I have a friend who is a geothermal wildcatter, but that doesn’t seem to get too far either.
In any case, I have no qualms about my impact from burning wood in my stove. I’m recycling trees!
deuce says
Same here, Jim. I have yet to cut down one of my sacred Osage Orange trees. I simply cut off dead limbs and ring some live limbs for later. Believe me, it’s not hurtin’ the tough bastards. The hard part is cutting deep enough to make the limb die but leaving it on the tree and out of the way. Osage Orange has more BTUs by volume than any common hardwood in North America. The Injuns considered its wood to be the best bow-wood. I have cut down my live hackberries, since they grow so thick and fast that they have to be culled. I’m a Shepherd of the Trees. 🙂
@Betty: We absolutely have more trees here on the Plains. The buffalo were hard on saplings and the Native Americans lit regular prairie fires to make better bison habitat. When the dust bowl hit, the Feds subsidized planting Osage Oranges everywhere around here.
Wayne says
I’m with you! I’ve been heating with wood since 1988. I split a pile of tulip poplar just this morning. There’s no better way to learn to identify wood by just the grain than cutting and splitting it for a few years. “Cutting and splitting.” Only those who’ve never held a maul refer to “chopping wood.” It takes brain and brawn to reduce a good sized tree to burnable pieces, and it’s often an excellent test of your problem solving skills. I love it!
On a totally different path… Google honored James Welch, the Native American author, today. I’ve read Fools Crow and The Heartsong of Charging Elk,and I highly recommend them both. The man was a first rate writer.
JimC says