It's pretty much all we have around here. Sprinkling of soft maples, poplar and pine, but oak is what I mostly process. Although I seem to be currently on the 12 year plan and am burning 5-6 year old stuff this winter.
Yeah, where you are, that makes sense. A bit north of you and there's a lot of black locust. That locust seems to only grow in groves, is just how large of a grove it is. I live on a cul de sac. There's only 5 homes on it, and only the one house that is closer to the main road has pretty much all BL. Across the main road is a grove of it that spreads across 2) 1 acre lots.
My experience is the same as Slocum. I usually have to throw in a split of sugar maple to burn down the coals. Sugar maple is by far my favorite wood to burn. Decent BTUs, not a ton of coals, dries fairly quickly and most of the maples around here are crooked and knotty, so no good for the sawmill. When i see nice straight oaks being cut and split for firewood, it hurts alittle lol.
I burn whatever I can burn but realise that some woods won't do a slow overnight burn; which means building a fire in the morning in a cold stove.
Red oak along with sugar maple and white ash is a large part of my firewood inventory because red oak is the most available downed wood here. I collect downed sugar maple, bitternut hickory, dead/bark free slippery elm, white ash, white oak, and hackberry before red oak since red oak has more moisture and takes longer to dry. White oak starts with less moisture than red oak and maintains that advantage while drying, i.e. red oak does not catch-up to white oak in my stacks. I always like burning a mix of firewood to create the desired amount of heat and coals. Faster burning wood with fewer coals works best in the morning while slower burning wood with more coals works better after the house warms up. Meanwhile, I favor burning any wood type which has the largest share of my stacks. EAB has added a lot of white ash in my rows recently and so I burn white ash ahead of other firewoods. The supply of downed white ash was very low before EAB and finding a downed white ash was a treat (now I limit how much I collect).
