I've been taking down ponderosa pines killed by ips bark beetles and willows dying due to lack of water. Both undesirable. The pines needed to be taken outside the forest so the beetles wouldn't spread and willow is a no from me. But today when walking the lake I came across a standing dead alligator juniper. Anyone from the southwest that burns will tell you there is nothing better or faster to get a fire started than dry alligator juniper. It wasn't much at all but it made my day!
I removed a few junipers and those “stumps” took forever to rot! I finally started little fires on top of em to burn it below ground level and just covered what was left w/ dirt. The green trimmings go up fast!
I only go through 2 cords a year. Nothing compared to what many in the midwest and back east burn every year.
I don't know of a better wood to start a fire. It splits easy and dries fast and gets any hard wood going in no time.
Just got done splitting and stacking. Cleaned up the scraps and feel like I did something productive on my day off. The wood that's more of a yellow in the first pic to the right is Pinon Pine.
Excellent! I’m probably one of the few on here who even knows what that is. I almost had one of those myself the other day but upon closer inspection it was still alive so I left it. But I did get started in on a huge pinion pine. Day was getting late so I had to call it off early. I’ll have to return another day to pick up where I left off.
That's a good size pinion. Quick question, I'm not familiar with splitting pinion in great detail. From what I've found in my limited experience it seems to tear apart in a way similar to elm. I was wondering if this is something common to the tree or maybe the last one I had split was unique? Also, do you believe the BTU rating regarding pinion? For a pine it seems way up there.
Yes it often does tear but sometimes it splits straight. Actually, the drier it is before splitting the more it will split along the grain. It tends to tear when it still has lots of moisture. It’s kind of a crap shoot. But yes, the BTUs really are up there. That is something unique to this particular pine. Sometimes since it’s kind of pitchy it can burn dirty so I tend to burn it hot and keep the air open. No tamped down fires with pinion pine, at least not until it’s getting near the coaling stage, Follow up burns with aspen help to clean dirty glass.
