It's nice wood that smells good and it dries quickly. It's not as high of btu as oak, hickory, sugar maple, beech, or ash, for wood we get a lot around here. The fact that it dries so quickly makes it really nice. The btu of it is better than other quick driers like poplar, box elder, or red pine. Ash is the king at quick drying and BTUs, but it doesn't smell as nice as cherry. Lucky me, I have a lot of choices for variety of wood.
It' should be fine. The big cherry I burned most of this year was felled 3 years ago by my buddy and on the ground. My mom was supposed haul it in and she didn't. There was a tiny amount of dirt under the bark, but it was so minimal that it brushed off after the bark was of for a month or so.
I have to agree with other commenters on the black birch call. They can look very similar at a young age. Even the leaves are a similar shape; but the black birch leaf has "ridges", while cherry are smooth. There's a couple things that clinch it for me - the orange-ish sapwood, and the light colored heartwood is characteristic of birch; cherry would be the opposite: red-orange heartwood, and light colored - almost white - sapwood. Plus the way the bark appears to have "torn" on some of the splits, and "peeled" on others: these "papery" traits are characteristic of birch. Either way, it's a good score! Black birch is higher BTUs than black cherry, and I think it dries just as fast. I love the wintergreen smell that it has.
It' cherry already... Don't make me bust out my Hoadley on ya'll... (http://www.amazon.com/Identifying-Wood-Accurate-Results-Simple/dp/0942391047) Please trust me that I can tell the two apart. We have a bunch of each. The heartwood is light pink and the sapwood is yellow. The bark, grain, texture and smell are all very typical of cherry and not black birch. I'll get some pictures later comparing the two, if the rain holds off.
Yep, definitely!! I cut a Black Cherry tree up last February (sure, I did not know it was cherry at the time! ). But anyway, I burned some of it in Oct and it was really dry, 10 or 15%. The tree was knocked over in sandy, so it was laying 90% down for 2 years, but it was still rooted (ball pulled out of ground....) and growing/live, so it was green when I cut it up. It burned really nice! Burned an entire cord of it this past winter.
You know, thanks for reminding me. I'm going to grab a few splits of the cherry I recently split and stacked and put them aside to chop up and use for the smoker!
I've been burning some 2yo. cherry now................on days when I need to burn here....................We've been having a couple warm days (no need to burn) followed by some cold/damp days lately (need to burn). Love burning it!!! So will you!!
two types where i live..black cherry with the rough bark..and pin ir fire cherry with the paper bark..of course i have both
