We will have a mix this year. Mostly oak, with hickory, soft maple, elm, a bit of gum and catalpa thrown in
I have predominantly maple on my property so that gets used early. Also mix locust, beech, and ash with it.
Surprises me some dont care for Oak, been burning wood (only heat source) for 40 years and without Oak it woud be much harder to keep the house warm in the dead of winter.
I set aside the BL and oak for when its really cold and overnight burns. I'll pick out some box elder or lighter btu wood if its only chilly out. But really I just mix together what comes next. This year's wood is mainly cherry and hackberry, oak and over a cord of uglies and shorts of mixed wood. Have some fine pine ready for the ride too.
I've got two thirds of a cord of poplar to start burning in October. After that, I have a long stack of apple, soft maple, ash, and mulberry. There's a cord of cherry that I'd like to burn too. For the coldest weather, I've got some red oak in the basement left over from last winter, lots of black locust, and sugar maple. I use white birch to start a fire. A small stash of pitch pine will be used for that as well.
Red/white oak, red maple and eastern white pine are the predominate species here . Kinda like Sears' past good, better, best marketing. Some years I've had a lot of oak and if I had enough all the time of oak I'd probably not bother with the other two. I'm not buying firewood if I can help it though so I burn what I got.
Yup! He won't be 3 until next month, but likes to know about everything ( a good thing). Even has his own toy chain saw.
Most of what I burn is red oak but I have some pine and sugar maple I’d like to use first, bit to mention over a cord of chunks and uglies.
My favorite wood is black birch. Dries well in about 18 months and has all the BTU’s of white oak. Only present in the eastern part of the US and a limited area within that. Plenty of oak around here as well. Loaded with red maple which is a great fast drying wood. I do like using pine for shoulder season although my stacks are mainly the high BTU stuff at this point.
I'm in the intermountain west. Below 15F it's larch/elm mix. I like ponderosa pine for kindling and shoulder wood. Lodgepole pine is a better burn time than ponderosa and gets mixed with larch and Douglas fir. I cut and burn Western juniper also, but in recent times I've shyed away from it because it's messy and hard on saw chain.
