Why I Oughta...

The wood-burning fireplace season is rapidly approaching.  Don't tell the dahlias that, but it is a reality that I'm actively preparing for around here.  And, that starts and ends with our annual firewood delivery.  This year, we once again had three face cords of kiln-dried firewood delivered:  One each of Birch, Cherry and Oak hardwoods. Since 2021 , I've been buying our firewood from The Grove in Sugar Grove.  Their prices are fair and their wood has been clean, dry and nicely split.   They dumped the load on our driveway and we got busy moving it back to the racks.  Filling the racks on the screened porch (one of each wood), the sideyard racks and the little side stoop that is under cover on the side of our house.   Here are a few photos of the delivery and the full racks (for consumption check-in purposes, of course).  The racks on the side of the house are full.  Left is Oak.  Right is Cherry.  I need to get the...

It might be August, but I'm starting to think about firewood.  And, putting together my order for the year.  Like I've done in the past few years, I wanted to take an inventory of what we have on-hand (and what we've burned thru) and get an idea of how much we need to order.   I did this type of post last year and showed that I had about 150 pieces left .  And, I ended up ordering three facecords (Birch, Oak, Cherry).  Most estimates say that a Full Facecord has between 200 and 275 pieces.  Let's call it 250 for easy math.  That means that I started with 150.  Added 750.  Ended up with 900 pieces of firewood. I stashed them on the various racks.  Inside the screened porch.  Out on the side stoop.  Under the cover in the sideyard.  And, a new place for last year:  under the pizza oven.   Here's how the racks look today.  After a full Winter of burning indoors.  And, a bunch of pizza oven burnin...

The last time I did a 'firewood consumption' check-in was back in December 2024 (pre-Christmas) when I showed how much hardwood firewood was remaining in the racks that live along the side of our garage, on our side 'stoop' and the pair of racks in our screened porch.  At that time, I had a full screened porch, the rack on the side stoop was full and the two side-yard racks were about 90% full.   Since then, we burned the balance of the Winter and I started to use the firewood in the pizza oven this year.   Last year, I bought three facecords of firewood (Birch, Cherry, Oak) delivered.  Here's the video showing the drop from the guys at The Grove Mulch and Firewood .  I bought 'kiln-dried' the past few years and have found it to be nicely dried and (maybe more importantly?) also pretty 'clean'.   I just placed the order for this year that is set to arrive in the coming days.  Same three face cords.  So...how are we looking in terms...

We started the season with three facecords - one Birch, one Oak, one Cherry.  And...after burning for a couple of months...here's where we stand - in the photos below.  The stoop rack is full-to-the-top, but the pile on the left has diminished quite a bit.  This is the Birch. The other two outdoor racks are 2/3rds full - Oak on the left, Cherry on the right: And, lastly...the inside racks - in the foreground is oak on top, cherry on bottom.  In the background is birch.  

We're now in the thick of things firewood-wise.  The burning will only increase in both frequency and length of sessions as we head towards the heart of Winter and the holiday season when we're hanging around the house more and more.  So, where do we stand?   Today marks the two-month mark.  Our firewood was delivered on September 30th, so that means we've burned through 60 days of wood.  With 90 days to go (that gets us to March 1st).  We had three facecords delivered on September 30th .  And, at that time all of the racks were empty but for the bottom of the porch rack and about 15 pieces on top of that.  What does it look like today?   The porch racks are full (mostly).  See below for the short one, followed by the double.  Note the wood on top of the double.  I'm claiming that's an equivalent amount that was remaining this Spring.   Outside, the smaller of the two racks has been exhausted.  The larg...

'Tis the season for firewood delivery in our house.  This year, I ordered three Face Cords for delivery from The Grove Firewood out in Sugar Grove.  1 Oak, 1 Cherry and 1 "SuperMix" - which is a combo of oak, cherry, hickory and birch (normally).  They didn't have any birch this season (so far), so my mix was heavier on Hickory. Here, below, is a video of the three face cords being dumped on our driveway.  This is kiln-dried firewood. How does this stack up to previous years? Here's last year's post from early October where I talked about a late September delivery of three facecords .  Fall of 2020, I ordered three , too.   I stacked these three facecords in the various racks - including a big messy pile on the stoop outside my office.  I'll post some photos of the current state of the racks in the coming days/weeks.  For now, here's a look at what the racks look like before I started loading the new wood:

The last time that I did a Firewood check for the diary was back when we had our Fall delivery in October of 2021 .  That was three full facecords - one Cherry, one Birch and one 'Super Mix' (a combo of Oak and Hickory).  We're now four full months later in terms of burning season and it was time to note where we stood in terms of tracking how much is left and whether we need to reorder.   Looking back at that October post , it seems that I started the season with the 'inside racks' being mostly full.  That meant that I filled up the two outdoor racks, the stoop rack (plus a side pile) and a stand-alone stack in the garage.   Where are we standing today?  The outdoor racks have been basically exhausted.  My strategy was to pull from these racks early in the season - while the weather was nice and we didn't have a lot of snow on the ground.  As things got colder and there was snow, I'd move to the stoop and garage racks.  That worked...

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...

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 ...

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...

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 J...

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 in...

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 ...