shoulder season's coming....what's on your stove's "menu"?

Great story, always worth hearing.

 

White pine and uglies for us.

 

Not sure. All I have is a small amount of ash, cherry, oak, and pine. I have lots of maple...so I guess it will be maple.

 

I'm holding off till October if possible. I'm in no hurry to use up those hard earned btu's any earlier than needed.

 

Chunks and uglies, caged for two years. Mostly honey Locust and mulberry. Then it's on to the 6 cords of ash and some two year Locust and mulberry splits. Starting to get the itch again. Got about 5 or 6 cord of red oak and white oak I collected this summer to get split up for the future seasons.

 

Sounds like you are set.

 

I'm gonna start off with some Tamarack slab wood and start mixing in some oak slab wood as it gets colder. I have some cookies and uglies/shorts to start with too. I have a big pile of softwood slab wood that I have no issue burning in shoulder season.

 

Not enough to matter, but it's very good firewood with a nice btu rating.
Hop Hornbeam (Ironwood) Ostrya virginiana 4,250 26.4
The Ironwood got hit hard by the ice storm so next year we'll have about .61 of a cord or if you're from NY, two face cord, we have one face cord ready for this year.

 

I'm pretty sure the "ironwood" on my property is Carpinus caroliniana aka "blue beech". It has smooth bark resembling beech, with "muscular" looking ridges, resembling my forearms after an hour or two at the chopping block

 

If the humidity and rain keep up here, I won't be burning. I'll be smoldering wood.

 

What I learned as Ironwood is the also called HopHornbeam Ostrya virginiana while American Hornbeam Carpinus caroliniana was also referred to as Musclewood. Two very different barks, but interestingly enough, both come from the Betulacea Family which is the same as Birch. American Hornbeam while also called "Blue Beech" is from an entirely different family than American Beech which is the F.a.g.aceae Family. (written that way because some crazy autocorrect program changed it to "hipsteraceae")

Either way, both Musclewood and Ironwood put out some fantastic BTU's....
Musclewood

Ironwood

 

I'll be starting this shoulder season with a little Lodgepole pine, and by peak season I'll start burning a LOT more Lodgepole pine. Then when the days start getting longer and things start warming again we'll cut back and only burn a little Lodgepole pine again.
But not to worry it's not as boring as all that, somewhere in there we'll likely end up burning a bit of the maple, walnut and elm that somehow worked it's way into the woodshed.

 

With the last 2 mornings in the 50s even here in SC I was thinking g the same thing.

I have some pine, oak, elm and maybe a bit of some random stuff for this fall. Probably won't burn till november unless we start really cold.

 

SYP - all beetle killed bark free, poplar, sweetgum, maple, blackgum, Leyland cypress, cedar... I might throw some dogwood in here and there.
I don't have any longleaf pine processed for this fall, maybe for the spring
Then it'll be all red oak and hickory

 

The only thing I have to burn this year is oak. Next year too.

 

That was me for the first 3 years.
Too bad it wasn't dry.

 

Mine was c/s/s in Nov '11.

 

Figured as much. I was referring to my first 3 winters here using mostly Oak that was, uh, less than dry.
Dang near dripping wet would be another description.