Why I Oughta...

Recently, I was working in my office early one morning when I heard the BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP that comes with the backing up of a large truck.  It sounded close, so it got me out of my desk chair to look outside.  And, that's the exact moment when I remembered that I reordered some firewood from Best Firewood.  I was the first delivery of the day it seemed.  I walked out the front door and saw the guys unloading - by hand - our two face cords.  One of Cherry.  And the other of 'mixed hardwoods'.   Like I did last Fall, I decided to forgo paying for stacking and had them drop the face cords on the driveway, close to where I intend to bring it around the back.    Here they are unloading: And here's the beginning of the big pile.  They started with the "mixed hardwoods" and the guy on the top of the truck is pulling the cherry firewood. It was just Friday that I posted about how we were down to around fifty pieces of firewood in our racks .   For this season, we

Earlier this week, I showed a couple of photos of the firewood delivery that we received from Best Firewood that included Birch, Cherry and Oak seasoned firewoods.  In that post, I mentioned that we ordered 33% more wood than we normally do - because of both the projected 'shortages' that might be coming for firewood AND the fact that I'm assuming that due to COVID, we're going to spending a lot more time around the house.  I built a couple of firewood racks to get ready for this delivery as I knew I wasn't going to have enough room on the current rack situation.  Here's a post showing one of the racks that I put a little cedar roof on top of and built with scrap lumber (not all of it treated).  This post is showing off three of my now 'outdoor racks'.  The past few years, I've kept all the wood that I've bought exclusively inside the screened porch and off the little covered stoop outside my office.  I'll post tomorrow to show those

Last week, I posted a couple of photos of a new firewood rack that I built from scrap wood in an attempt to get ahead of any sort of firewood shortage that some are predicting this year.  I needed that new rack because, I was planning on ordering 33% more than I normally order each late Summer/early Fall.   I've now used the same basic design on two racks that I've posted about and one more that I haven't posted just yet. This is the fourth season that we've ordered firewood from Best Firewood and third one that we've ordered during this time of year.  This year being the earliest that we've ordered yet - with a late August delivery that you see here in this post. In 2018, I ordered in late September .  In 2019, I ordered in early October . Due to the rumored 'shortage', in 2020, I ordered in late August . And, that 33% extra?  I ended up buying three face cords. 1 face cord of Birch 1 face cord of Cherry 1 face cord of Oak I've a

A couple of years ago, I built a pair of custom-sized firewood racks that I keep in our screened porch .  They're made of Cedar 2x4's (larger than what you find at a Big Box store) and between the two cedar racks, we store a lot of our firewood inside the screened porch during the Winter.  I have another metal rack that I keep outside my office door and between those three racks, I can usually handle the two face cords of firewood that we order each early Fall/Late Summer.  You can see what two face cords of firewood look like in this post from last Fall .  We filled all three racks and had to pile or stack wood up both in the screened porch AND next to the metal rack.  So, we're already in a position to not have enough space for just two face cords. But, there's a theory going around - and seems to be manifesting itself in the southern hemisphere right now - that there will be a firewood shortage this Winter.  With COVID still here (hi there, pandemic), it would

Recently, we had twelve steaming yards of hardwood fines mulch delivered to our driveway from Best Firewood and Mulch - the same folks who deliver our firewood.  That's the delivery in the video at the top of this post showing the driver doing a little bit of 'jiggling' with his lifted bed to get all of the mulch to drop.  Nine years ago, I posted a similar video of ten yards of mulch that was dropped on our old driveway.  You can watch that video here .  This new mulch is destined for the beds that I pointed out in my recent garden tour post  and will fill in the spots between the front (where we're doing the cocoa bean hull mulch) and the far back (where I've been doing the wood chips from the Villag e). I have a seven cubic yard cart (wheelbarrow...but not a traditional wheelbarrow).  There are 27 cubic feet in a yard.  Let's figure that it takes four carts to get that yard.  Twelve x four per yard = 48 carts lugged into the back and side yard.  Ther

The last time I did a firewood consumption check was with this post on January 20th of 2020 .  A little bit over a month has past and we've exhausted probably 3/4 of the face cord that was delivered.  That's a fast pace.  In 2019, I ordered the backfill face cord in mid-February , so this year was running three weeks ahead of last year.  Last year, it seemed that the firewood lasted until right up at the beginning of Spring.  This year, I'm not so sure it will.  One of the things that we learned last year is that we wished we had firewood for during the Summer and Fall - to burn in our outdoor fireplace.  So, that means that if we burn through our rack in March, we won't have anything to burn - unless we turn to the Ash firewood that we picked up on our block . Knowing we're now in year three of buying and burning firewood, we might need to consider ordering more in the Fall or doubling the second order. 2017/2018: Ordered one face cord in January 2018/2

I shared the sad state of our firewood hoard a few days back and mentioned that another split (50/50 Oak/Cherry) Face Cord was on it's way.  Welp, today, it is here.   This is the second year in a row that I had a third Face Cord delivered during the year.  In 2019, it came in mid-February , so we're running a couple of weeks ahead of last year.  Last year, I turned to the 50/50 Cherry/Oak blend for a couple of reasons (they were out of birch, I didn't want Ash, and this was the only 50/50 mix they had at the time) and those mostly held up this year.  We'll burn this stuff up over the next few months as the weather stays cold and hopefully, this load will take us until the weather breaks.   One thing to note:  quite a bit of this wood is split what I'll call 'larger'.  Larger pieces overall and what seems like more heartwood and less sapwood.  Not sure that's possible, but it seems that I'm getting my hands on a bunch of interior/heartwood p

Exactly one year ago, I posted photos and details of our annual firewood delivery from Best Firewood and talked about how we went with Cherry and Birch as our early season woods.  When we built our house, Nat insisted on a wood-burning fireplace with a masonry chimney.  We have one in our family room and we use the one on our screened porch.  When we bought the lot, there was a little bit of wood that had been cut down that was laying around.  Our firewood journey began with that inherited lot and some chopping in November of 2017 .   That lasted us until about mid-December.  And got us going in terms of burning fires most days we're home during the Winter.  Since then, we've had wood delivered each season that we've lived in our new house in Downers Grove starting with a mixed Face Cord that we had delivered right around Christmas of 2017 .   From there, I've done check-ins on our consumption including: February 2018 consumption check Delivery in October

I've posted here on the blog all about our firewood consumption over the past couple of Winters.  This past Winter, we started with a Face Cord of Cherry and a Face Cord of Birch .  Burned through both of those.  Then in February, we ordered a third Face Cord - a combo of Cherry and Oak . The previous Winter, we ordered just one Face Cord and ripped through it in no time.  We also burned a bunch of wood that we had on hand when we bought the property.  Not quite a face cord there, but close.  So, all in, that's about five Face Cords that have been burned.  We built the house new, so I *knew* that the Chimney was clean when we started.  But, I wasn't sure when we should get our chimney swept.  With the Summer here, I figured it was a slow time for the service providers, so I called one locally and set up an appointment.  When he got there, he asked me some questions:  type of wood we burn and how often.  Told him we burn everyday and we burn mostly hardwoods.  When

Just two weeks ago, I shared a photo in my ongoing tracking of our firewood consumption and mentioned that we had mostly exhausted our Fall supply of Cherry and Birch that we had delivered and stacked in our screened porch and side porch.  This photo you see above is from a week or so ago after we had a second, late-Winter delivery of another Facecord of firewood from Best Firewood in Aurora.  This would be the third Facecord of wood that we've worked through since early October.  That's four months - at approximately 1/2 of a Facecord per month.  The supplier that we use has a different type and caliber of wood available in late January/early February vs. what they have in September and October.  So, this order included a wood that we haven't bought before:  Oak.   This is a Facecord that is split 50/50 between Oak and Cherry.  But, the Cherry is *different* than the Cherry we had delivered in October.  If you look at the rack in on the right, you will see the to

It appears that I didn't do a proper firewood consumption check-in post in the month of January this year as the last time I posted a photo of the wood racks was late December of 2018 .  Here's a photo that I took a few days ago that shows only the largest rack closest to our family room.  Why?  Because the other two racks (the one outside and the other one in our screened porch) are both empty.  Above, you can see a small pile of Cherry left on top and a small pile of Birch on the bottom.  This won't last long. Compare the quantity in the photo above to where we were last February 8th when we were using the larger, metal, traditional rack .  My assumption is that the cold Winter isn't going to snap into Spring anytime soon, so I've placed an order with Best Firewood to replenish the racks.  Unfortunately, the *good* Cherry as well as the Birch firewood are all sold out for the season.  So, the backfill order was a Face cord that is split between Cherry (the

Last year, I shared a couple of photos and tracked the progress of our firewood consumption during the Winter.  We started with a rack of wood I scavenged from our yard and split myself .  Having burned through that quickly, I ended up ordering a face cord of wood that arrived in early January .  By February of this year, we had burned through half of the Face Cord .  By March it was gone.   We ordered a mix of hardwoods last year and I think we got a bunch of Ash along with some Oak.   This year, I wanted to get ahead of things and decided to order in September.  And I wanted to order some specific woods:  Cherry and Birch.   Like last year, I used the same provider (Best Firewood and Mulch) but I ordered a full face cord of Birch.  And a full Face Cord of Cherry.  The Cherry for long-burning nature and, of course, the smell it puts off and the birch for the heat output and the bright and lively flames.   On the delivery day, the two guys arrived with a truck full o