Ok, what do y'all use for "shoulder wood"?

If your home & family are warm, you're doing it right.

 

X2

 

I have a separate cord of pine and a half-cord ugly box full of uglies. Planning on using both for Fall and Spring shoulder season. Probably will mix three or four splits of pine with however many uglies will fit in the stove I have mixed hardwoods for the balance of the year.

 

Processing small branches and "stuff" can take extra time. Some people have extra time, some do not. If you just don't have enough time then you have to focus on bang for your buck or ROI and manage that time to the best of your abilities. Which can mean focussing on the meat and potatoes of processing a tree. Which usually means tossing time consuming branches to the wayside. Maybe in a chipper. Maybe in a burn pile.
If you have time and patience to process some firewood out of branches, go for it. It'll keep ya warm for sure.

 

Are you sure your handle isn't BirchyDave? (I'll be here all week)

 

Out here in the PNW, temps seldom dip below freezing. Compared to a larger part of the country we really don’t have a shoulder season. Wood is wood and it’s just a matter of what comes out of the shed on any given day.


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I try to use every part if possible, even down to the sawdust making my own fire starters with soy wax.

 

Big fan of bark here also. We burn a lot of Fir and the bark off the butt sections can be several inches thick sometimes in excess of 6 or 8 inches. Really coals up nice although it can be a little messy!

 

Same here. Just burn it as it comes out of the stacks!

 

Thinking about it a farm feeder or whatever you call them cages with the thick almost mesh like siding small half inch or so squares for hay feeding slowly would work with the splitter garbage, I’ve thrown a lot into the woods and wish I didn’t since the stuff is good fuel but once it gets rained on, it becomes pretty hard to dry out. Maybe even a couple washer tubs of the stuff would help.

 

I have an abundance of Cottonwood and box elder. I like both for shoulder season and cold starts. Not much good when the deep cold hits, literally have to reload every hour.

I’m jealous of you guys with oak and locust, best I got is ash and maple.

 

Thank you! I like it here.

 

Pine spruce and aspen rounds with some hardwood sawmill waste to get everything going in the boiler

 

Lodgepole pine, some Aspen at times. A bit of cottonwood when available. Ask the same question in February, you get the same answer.
But, I have a stash of black walnut and osage, so I may mix it up a bit when the wood is ready.

 

Cedar (which is really juniper), tulip poplar (which is really closer to magnolia), pine (catch-all for evergreen), maple (various types) and cherry.
I plan on working my way up to maple and cherry,roughly in that order, even in the shoulder season, but keeping it small until it gets cold. The real question is what do you get to when it gets cold. The obvious answer is the higher btu species like oak, but only only once it nice and dry.
Sorry, getting a little punchy watching sci-fi.

 

Honestly, I'm not a fan of wood species that burn down and "coal" forever. My BKK doesn't benefit from that. Now my old Timberline, that stove was an azz-kicker! I really regret selling it. It was a heating tank, especially after the secondary air mod. So be it.

 

I burn chunks and uglys in the shoulder season. They tend to be big thick and bulky chunks, so they burn slowly (giving off less heat) and burn a long time, both perfect for shoulder burning.