In the pic with your son I noticed what looks like some birch/Aspen? Would that get priority over the DF? What is the ratio of soft vs hardwoods in your area?
Yep! That’s Aspen. I do enjoy burning Aspen. It burns hot and very clean. It will clean off the glass on your stove if there is soot on it. I don’t necessarily prioritize it though, as Doug Fir and Lodgepole have a much longer burn time. The only hardwoods in my area are Gambel/Scrub Oak. It grows in big stands. I’ll track down a stand of it and post some pics on here sometime. It’s a PITA to process, but it’s amazing stuff. I have about a cord of it ready to go for really cold nights.
Grapple trucks around here charge $100.00 a hour to move logs or pole wood. Several portable mills use them to haul free logs given to them.
It is perfect sized stuff. That’s one of the things I really like about Lodgepole Pine. It rarely grows to a huge diameter, so it’s really easy to manage. It’s also a slow growing pine, so it’s very dense, which gives it a longer burn time.
We have a fair amount of it in our forests as well but I dont burn it as I have lots of larch and fir to choose from. I was once given about a half cord of it all nicely seasoned so it was interesting for me to see how it performed. Since I burn almost exclusively softwoods (occasionally a bit of birch) I was amazed at how much ash aspen made. It burned well though. I think if I had to burn lots of it due to a lack of supply of other woods I would do ok.
All my experience with Lodgepole comes from an elk hunting trip years ago. We had a variety of fire woods in camp and some of it seemed to burn hotter and longer. I was told by a local hunter that it was Lodgepole and was the best of the pines. He said it and Larch were his favorite woods for his fires at home. Besides, it has a cool name evocative of snug Jeremiah Johnson mountain man style log cabins and lodges. You and your dinosaur helper should get as much of that stuff as you can!
