As i have taught my 3 year old grandson to tell any one who asks. "If you can see grass its not enough wood"
Good good!!! I stumble on a lot of that myself. I had some dry wood and moved a few times. By the time I got to the house I have now, there wasn't much but a couple of firepit fires worth. Then that kept getting wet. Then there came time where I had the gall to BUY dry wood. a rick if it were. New area and I hadn't explored much yet. Then I started finding some serious places that gave it for free and it was often in large amounts. Lumber yard near me, a shed building company and a couple places where heat treated pallets are involved.(I know what you might be thinking about the lumber, not pressure treated or stained. All good clean wood often just cut up boards or beams and often Douglas Fir a common powerhouse here in the PNW) CL exploded, Offer Up came around, and before I knew it I realized and told myself Ive gotta catch up on stacking! A far cry from starting with mere handfuls to "now where can I put this pallet box...?" Definitely a warm tingle feeling when I get my car loaded up then unloaded then stacked. You have fun you hear?
Haha! Wow I think I might try the same thing with a pallet box this summer. Maybe get some split up for folks for their camping fires. When you get enough wood to do that, one hand washes the other.
I stumbled on a block that was HEAVY at a pallet processing place, new scrounge area. It was hard to identify at first I almost thought it was petrified. When I split it, it just almost split like glass clean, then came the unbelievably wonderful smell of pitch in the wood. I was so elated. Then I looked at the block and wondered whoa, just completely fatwood, if this is a block, what did the source of this look like???
This reminds me of the year before we had the stove fitted in our last house. They were taking a big oak tree down at my wife's school and I spent a weekend doing about a dozen trips in the company pool car because I knew we were going to be getting a stove at some point. If I knew how great oak was back then I'd have hired a truck to take it all (it was a huge tree)! Great work dusky, it's cool knowing that all your hard work will be keeping the family warm as toast for years to come
Piles of firewood, a pretty lady AND she plays football? What's not to love about that! Great to see you again, dusky! That's a great cache of wood there, you keep that up and you'll be at 5 years ahead in no time!! You could use some of those dry standing dead maple rounds for Swedish candles or rocket stoves for fun, if you're looking for something to do on a summer weekend!
Welcome back dusky. Looks like you've been a busy girl indeed! And no, I do not think you are crazy for wanting that "soft heat." We love it here!
I really feel for you with that smoky portable stove. In my early teens I moved into the sun porch on my old house near Montreal and it was heated by a coal oil burning portable because it wasn't on the main house heating system. I did learn to care for that stove but it got huge buildups on the wick because in that environment it was never shut down except to clean it. The top edge of the wick would get a sort of crust of creosote built up on it. What a PITA that was.
