What's Your Favorite Shoulder Season Wood?

I've burned about 5 cords of tulip poplar since i started heating with wood.

Maple is a good regular season wood in the IS.

 

I cut my first large tooth aspen last year and used it for camping wood this summer. Probably needed a little more time to dry. It burned good but not great. Lasted a long time.

 

Normally pine but I don’t have any of that right now. Then the chunks uglies and wood that’s going a bit punky but I don’t have any of that either. So now I’m burning some oak that was part of a holz hausen I built years ago that’s been outside uncovered a little too long. Once the weather turns cold I’ll switch to my oak ash and maple that’s been in a shed for 4 years.

 

The splits at the top of the stack get burned first.

 

I voted poplar and silver maple. If I had either, they get shoulder priority. My stacks are 80/20 oak and mulberry now, so uglies first.

 

I like Silver Maple, but haven't got much lately...been burning Box Elder a lot in recent years though...I actually have a bunch of that on deck for this winter. My Kuuma VF100 furnace is a bit big for our house, so it will heat the place easily on a partial load of BE, at least until "real" winter hits...which we haven't had much of that around these parts in recent years...

 

I feel like it is always shoulder season here in Tennessee and my house is small so I always burn shoulder season wood. Silver Maple is great, and this year I have a bunch. I will burn poplar as well. I have been appreciating some nice dry pine lately too. I have some nice rounds of black cherry that I look forward to splitting and burning next year, Black cherry might be my favorite. Love how it smells.

 

I'll save the oak for really cold weather .
Some years all I've had was red maple for all Winter, but that can be a shoulder season wood for me too.
We have a lot of eastern white pine so that is most often our official shoulder season wood. It's almost always the first load of wood in the morning or even a cold start (all year) because it lights off so dependably and easily, plus a nice quick hot burn also good in the morning to get things going again.

 

Yep, for me it's shorts, chunks and uglies - regardless of species.

 

I have been burning Ponderosa Pine & have been pleasantly surprised with it, I have another big one to take down this winter. It will all be getting bucked up for firewood. I was surprised by how light & fluffy the ash is. Right now I am finishing off the last bit of Silver Maple I have.

On a side note, my son-in-laws father came over to get a load of wood; he has been burning wood for over 30 years. I told him I had been burning Ponderosa Pine…He says “Won’t that creosote up your chimney & cause chimney fires?”
I replied “ Not if it’s dry”

 

Did he ?

 

Yes he did, it cracked me up.

 

Going with pine... nice dry pine.
Also going with uglies and chunklies of any species. Just finished building, and almost filling, my second half-cord ugly box! Remnants of Box #1 ready to go!

 

For me it’s usually silver maple. I have so stinking much of it!

 

Poplar is my fav because it dries so quick, but this year I am looking at a lot of red maple, and cutoffs and chunks and bark, and heat treated lumber from a furniture shop that is nearby.

I haven’t happened upon any sass around here but I’ll be keeping my nose out for some.

 

During shoulder season, I make my fire kind of like it's a soup recipe depending on how fast I need to get it going, and what I have the most of for low BTU wood that I want to use up. I have lots of basswood so that's always part of it, I'm adding in some spruce and poplar, but then I need to add something to that so I have some coals so I'm not reloading the stove every hour so I'll throw in some sugar maple or ash, then I also want to use up as many uglies as possible before winter starts.

 

Time to bump this thread with a couple days left to vote. Looks like silver maple for the win.

 

Bump worked…I hadn’t seen this thread.
Just a year and half into setting aside shoulder wood.
Been working through blue spruce and I’m not a giant fan.
I have some poplar in there and wish I had more. Burns hotter and longer than the spruce for sure.
I’ve got 3 cord of white pine I’ll try at the end of this season.

 

Pine to get things going then elm. Nothing coals like elm. Can keep the stove going on a very low simmer for 24 hours, get a relight, and do it again. I prefer to keep the stove going if I can. Anything else and it’s just too much heat even at the lowest setting so I have to let it go out and relight when I get cold.