I have been putting up some more wood. A couple of stacks of lodge pole pine and been noodling some elm. The Elm if you look at the pic had been sitting a ranchers place out here for a couple of years in logs with no bark. I cut them up in rounds last summer and I am now getting around to splitting and stacking them. I took a MM reading because it looked pretty dry to me. Surprise. That stuff is still sitting at 23% moisture. The meter does not lie.
Those pictures are crazy to me. It doesn't look like there are any trees to burn out there. Here, if you don't constantly mow an area down trees will grow in it.
I tried splitting this stuff with my hydraulics and found it is easier and just as fast to noodle it. Terrible to try and split. As far as BTU's you get what you can around here and around here Elm is not bad. Burn some cottonwood then burn some elm you will see what I mean.
I took an elm out of the city here, tree was 60" at the base. split all i could and noodled some. ended up with a load to the dump because it was just too miserable... We have oak, locust, ash, hickory..... and the tulpip polar( cotton wood). Ill take the cotton over the elm, at least you can process the cotton.
Yeah, you think you get enough wind and sun exposure to dry that elm up? 23% mc, you could burn that in a very short time. But it will be even better if you let it go until next season.
Yep since I am on the 3 year plan I will not need this wood anytime soon. Once it is in splits and stacked I think it will dry out pretty fast. I think when all said and done I will have about 2 to 2 1/2 cords of elm. I will noodle the whole lot of it. When you have about 50 saws any excuse will do to run them.
Hmmm, it splits fine for me, yeah, it can be a bit of a pita splitting from time to time, but the stuff burns great. It's nowhere near the ash amount as black walnut, and it puts out a bit more heat than walnut too. Honestly, I could heat my house all season long on elm alone. It's clean to bring inside, compared to hickory or cherry, and I'll even say it's less ashy than cherry is.
That is crazy. The big skies out west I see. That throws off my entire sense of perception. I need to head out that way sometime and experience some of it. Is it difficult locating trees to scrounge, or are there a lot just not in the pictures?
There are some old ranches out here that have planted trees and a lot of those die off. When someone comes along and is willing to fall the tree for you and haul it all away for free it is easy to get wood. Plus I am about 30 miles from Cheyenne and I have been able to get some wood already cut down there. I also go to the mountains every year for Lodge Pole pine and get wood there. Those mountains are about 100 miles. I seem to do always get plenty of wood every year.
