For this year anyway. I split all the ash I had left in rounds this morning. I still have some oak and cherry left to split. I'll work on that once I get the ash stacked.
I like ash, but I love maple and beech, and do nothing but say bad words at Yellow Birch since it is stringy when splitting. I won't cut White Birch for my own firewood due to how it burns up so fast, but most people will accept it if you sell it to them, along with Brown Ash. They seem to love beech though, even though splitting can be hit or miss. The same can be said for ironwood, though most of the time it is hollow-hearted here if there is any size to it at all. Basswood and popil are out for either my own firewood or selling to others, and unfortunately cannot be sold for Mat Logs even. Any other hardwood for mat logs is fine though. Right now, because the emerald ash borer has not hit Maine yet, Ash is paying really good money; $650 a thousand board feet for selects.
I've processed a pile of ash this past year. Have a boatload of them to cut in the coming weeks. Some will become saw logs. Some will be given away. It's a real shame it'll be all but gone in a couple years and I'll probably never again in my lifetime have the pleasure of burning it. I'll miss the smell and the heat from it.
I too love Ash! I more than likely won't be able to get all the dead standing ash on my property down and processed before it rots, I'm trying though! I've already given away 10 cord if it this year. I'm like you, Scotty that smell is something I'm going to miss! It's a nice cross between the smell of Oak and maple, very pleasing and never overpowering. Ahhhh...Ash! I'm mostly going to miss it when I'm smoking meat, I use it for my coal bed and add different woods in small amounts. Yep, ash is gooder stuff!
I too love ash and will sorely miss it. We still have plenty left but a lot of it is going bad now. Fortunately we do have a few live ones yet but not enough and it won't help me but could help our grandchildren. Like Splitsnstacks we can't possibly burn it all before it goes bad. There simply is too much even though we've given tons of it away and even sold some plus made some lumber, etc. But, we have to accept it, like it or not, that most of it will soon be gone in most areas.
Here we have these 3 corner traps placed in ash trees with some sort of attractant for the emerald ash borer to see if they show up, but so far they have not. My forester made it perfectly clear...cut the ash while you still can and when I can, it goes into the hardwood Log pile or the Mat Log pile. It is a shame, I got some nice Ash on me in places.
Yep, I think all the time about never burning it again. It's my favorite hardwood, seasons fast, splits good and burn darn near as good as oak.
I noticed that when I switched to a cat stove that none of the wood smells anymore. You can go outside my house and not even smell that there's a stove burning in my house.
That's the logs they lay down in soggy areas, line them up and use them as a road underlayment (or "mat")
A mat log is any hardwood species of wood other than Basswood or Popil that is 10" on the top and 16"-6" long (or 18'-6" long). It can have 2 inches of sweep in 8 feet, ANY amount of knots, and is not graded. Current pay is around $370 per 1000 board feet. From these they saw into 8x8 beams, drill holes in them, and with 1-1/2 threaded rod bolt the timbers together to make 16 foot long x 4 foot mats that they use in powerline construction. Because so many powerlines are coming out of Canada (New Brunswick and Quebec) Mat Logs are driving up the price of both pulpwood and firewood around here.
I've heard several call them mat logs because they use them for roads on the logging site..... Good to know, thanks!
I forgot to mention they are also called "Envirologs too", since they are there to placate the environmentalists, but here is the goofy thing...on our sawlog sheet they are all listed as Pallet Wood. So try to figure out that scale sheet, because 16 foot pallet wood (aka: mat logs) pays different than regular pallet wood. Since log yards take both select, #1, #2, #3's, mat logs and pallet wood, its hard to understand. Its so confusing my truck drivers just average the loads, which is a bummer because it brings down the cost of select logs and brings up the price of mat logs. I suppose it averages out in the end, but now I run straight loads: all mat logs, or all hardwood logs no mixing so I get a better pay for my wood as it scales up and the corresponding price!
