Local hoarding where the folks just want it gone. Went up last week and cut a load of small stuff clearing a path to access some larger wood. Talked with the owners and they told me they had moved a lot of the wood down the hill and left it in a pile. Went up this afternoon between rain showers and cut a little load. One log made a good small load for the Tacoma. Been a while since I’ve split anything by hand but the rounds were a little more than I cared to lift. It split easily with the Fiskers maul. And yes this little load was a bit of a work out for an old fart. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Was able to back to it. Kind of a tight fit because there is a tree and a post to squeeze between. Was thinking of taking the portable winch up and drag some to the road. That way I could just throw it in a trailer and get a bigger load. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Good question Jason. I know you hit the big 5 0. Ive referred to myself as an old fart but not that often. One thing ive noticed in recent years is i sound like my folks did 30 years ago. I feel like an old fart more often then not. I'll see someone younger than me that looks a lot older and i ask the GF do i look that old? Just as long as i never smell like an old fart!
Nice load to pick from, Reloader. I love splitting alder, splits clean and dries fast. I find Alder to be like the PNW version of Ash that everyone talks about. Great hardwood for shoulder season, great for using in the bbq. It's not your high BTU wood but still a happy medium.
Not a fair comparison with ash. According to the FHC btu chart alder is 14.8 mbtu and ash (white) is 21.6, but i understand what you are saying. Red maple would be a better one. IMO its rated too high on the FHC chart at 20 mbtu
No I agree it's not in the same range of BTUs, big leaf maple would be a closer comparison. Since the winters are so mild around here, it's easy to go overboard on a fire and we open a door but alder is just perfect heat without that issue. I'd wanna burn it when I know there's a group of people likely coming over. Alder splits really well, even better than maple IME with its knot-less trunk wood, grows extremely straight too.
We are a bit northwest of FatBoy85 and all we get here is Red alder, Douglas fir, western hemlock and red or yellow cedar and the occasional pine or spruce. So mainly conifers. there are areas that have Big leaf maples but you usually don't get those. campinspecter's firewood permit doesn't allow him to fall trees for firewood, only scrounge what is left behind after a setting is finished with.
I'd say that changes based on how cold it would get. Sometimes it's only hardwoods but that discrepancy is I usually start burning with Cottonwood and a bit of Doug fir and pine. From there it could be cherry, alder, and then colder as it gets, oak Madrona, maple if I have it, black locust and a couple others. The oak really does well but I don't stuff a huge load in the stove unless its needed. Up north of me got more periods of snow this year. While I was expecting snow in our area, seemed to fall more outside of it. We also had periods where it would just dip below freezing easily. I just tend to collect more hardwoods in my scrounging it seems so an accurate percentage could be 60 % hardwoods 40% softwoods overall burned. Usually I start my fires with those soft hardwoods and work up. All depends on what space I'm heating. Having helped my parents start their fires, especially when they've been gone on vacation and come back, the stove requires that warm-up and it can take quite a while for things to really get toasty.
You're not far off from us. Our new property has some pines standing dead so I'm gonna get busy on those when I can. A blight has been going around killing the Bigleaf around us. Enough to have the local college bringing some awareness to it as well as the DNR. Some environmental changes have been reason to blame and the tree symptoms are less leaf foliage. They're calling it dieback so the leaves become either yellowed and are drastically smaller than the usual leaves being far bigger than both our hands together. I hope your winter is concluding as ours slowly is. Lots of hail for the past couple days.
