Why I Oughta...

Back a week or so ago 1 , we had our Fall delivery of firewood delivered to kick off the burning season.  This year, I ordered (again) from The Grove Firewood out in Sugar Grove.  This is the second time I've ordered from them having been pretty happy earlier this Spring with a couple of face cords.   Here, below, is the delivery being dumped on our driveway.  This represents three face cords - a full face cord of Cherry, full face cord of Birch, and a facecord of their "Supermix".  That "Supermix" is a combo of Oak, Hickory and Cherry, so the driver mentioned that since I bought a separate face cord of Cherry, he went 50/50 with Hickory and Oak.  This is the first year that I've bought Hickory wood - where I normally buy Oak, Cherry and Birch. That load of three face cords is between six hundred and seven hundred pieces of firewood and is the same amount that I bought last Fall.  Here's the post showing three facecords of Birch, Cherry and Oak (o...

Here's a look at the five firewood racks that we have in and around our house.  (I have another aack at the back of the property, but we use that one for fire pit wood.) These were full with Oak, Cherry and Birch early this Fall and by early January,  we've just about completely exhausted the supply.  First, the pair of outdoor racks along the fence line.  On the left, you see some of the recently split Ash (or Walnut??).   On the right, you see some of the unprocessed Norway Maple that came down this Summer.   I've just ordered another two Face Cords of wood that will be delivered next week to fill these up, but I'm thinking I should get the rounds out first so I can split them this Winter. Next up, below, is the Oak rack that I keep on a side stoop. Two months ago, it was full .  Today, it is empty but for a coupe of pieces that I'm keeping on hand to test moisture content over time. Now, we move into the screened porch.  The double ra...

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...

It has been seven weeks since I did the last "Firewood Consumption" check here on the blog with these photos on December 4th, 2019 .  Today, I'm sharing this (somewhat sad) photo showing the current state of our firewood hoard.   On the top is what Cherry firewood we have remaining (about a dozen pieces) and on the bottom is what Birch firewood we have remaining (about two dozen pieces).  This is in addition to the 'hearth-side' firewood storage box that holds about a dozen combo teams. This order was delivered in October of last year and was a face cord of Birch and a face cord of Cherry. Comparing this to last season (2018/2019), we're about two weeks ahead of where we were last year.  Check out the February 2nd post from last season (Feb 2019) and the 'stack' looks similar to today. I keep a tertiary rack on the side stoop outside of my office door that I've exhausted all the Cherry/Birch from, and once empty,  I moved the little bit ...

This is the first firewood check since we had a couple of face cords delivered in early October this year .  As we've done in the past, the guys stacked our Birch and Cherry firewood in a couple of spots including these racks in our screened porch that you see above.  Let's start there:  on the smaller rack in the back, all of the wood on top has been used and a little more than half of the rack has been burned down.  The rack in front is still untouched.  There's that one errant log leaning up against the fireplace, right?  That's one of the pieces that I cut from the downed Oak tree limb earlier this Fall.  Once the rack clears out, I'll drop it on there to season for a year or so.  In the screened porch, there's one other stack that existed against the wall that has already been burned off, too.  As for the other rack, it looks like it is more than halfway burned, too.    And all of the wood stacked in front of the rack ha...