Answers to Life's Questions

A week or two ago, my brother-in-law asked me for some advice, which I was happy to provide. Upon further reflection, however, I realized that, in these times of woe and want, people are looking to Rural Ways for help. People want to know how to answer the hard questions of the day, and they are coming to Rural Ways to borrow from the wisdom found here. As a result, it is probably important for Rural Ways to publish thoughtful responses to some of those difficult questions. I will start with a short essay in answer to my brother-in-law. He asked, "Would you burn eastern white pine?"

While Rural Ways does not currently have access to a supply of eastern white pine, the question goes deeper than that, and the answer has three parts: accessibility, collection efficiency, and heat production. We'll address these in order.

The first issue you'll face in choosing what to burn is accessibility. In other words, can you get it on the truck? There is lots of great wood out there that is totally inaccessible. You can be driving along the highway looking at a veritable woodlot on the opposite side of a river canyon, but you're not going to burn any of the wood unless you first build a highway bridge. Most of the wood I collect is on the National Forest. Firewood gathering there is limited to 150 feet of designated roads. If you see a good pile of wood that is 300 feet from the road, you're going to have to carry every stick of it 150 feet. (Or, use a wheel barrow, which I have done.) Thus, the first rule of going to cut firewood is that you may spend half your day looking for it. It's not that there isn't plenty of firewood, it's that you have to be able to drive to it. I found a huge pile of dead spruce yesterday, but I decided that it would take too much hiking to get it from the woods to the truck. So, there it sits.

The second issue is collection efficiency, which is the technical term for how many minutes you will need to run the saw for one stick of wood to put in the stove. You can go out in the woods right now and drive up to a pile of dead oak. It is pretty good wood (see the section on heat production) and it will practically fall into your truck. But, the growth habit of the tree is totally against you. It is skinny, twisty, and branchy. You can spin and turn that chainsaw like Houdini, but when you are done you've got just four or five sticks in the truck and a bunch of tiny branches on the ground. The best fuel is straight, round, and branch free. I know, it sounds hard to come by, but some trees are going to be better than others. A forest grown spruce, for example, will often be straight and branch free for 20 or 30 feet.

The third issue is heat production, which is really the question that my brother-in-law was asking. Will I have to fill my stove twice an hour with this stuff, or will one good chunk burn all night? The real answer to this question is that beggars can't be choosers. Which is to say that, if you can drive up to it, buck it and load it, and be home for lunch, you'd darn well better take it. Sure, some wood is going to burn longer and hotter than others. In my part of the world, I would prefer a dense wood like pinyon or oak over a light (papery) wood like aspen or true fir, but if I can drive to a pile of dead aspen, I'll take it sooner than I'll walk up and down the mountain with an armload of pinyon.

My brother-in-law lives on the east coast, and the wood in question had been cut by someone else, but was available to him to use if he wanted it. So, what did I tell him? You will get more BTUs out of a cord of eastern hardwood than you will out of a cord of eastern white pine. So, if you have a choice, sure, burn hardwood. But, this is free wood. All you have to do is drive up to it, load it, and take it home. So, yeah, I would burn it. It meets the accessibility and collection efficiency tests, and it is a lot better than burning a snow bank.