Why I Oughta...

A color/aging check-in on the Ash Firewood that I acquired last year.  I still haven't split all of the rounds, but with the social distancing experience going on, we're going to have some good backyard time in the next week or two.  I first covered this wood - when it was standing as a (dead) Ash tree last year in November .  The full archive of ash firewood posts are here .   I had the rounds dropped over the fence late last year .  And started splitting and stacking it right after Christmas .  Head there to that post and see the color. There's been a change and I think darkening of the wood since this was first split.  I know that I kind of have a 'golden hour' thing going on in the photo at the top of this post.  But, to my eye: it seems to have aged/seasoned. I haven't put a moisture meter to any of this stuff yet, but it seems that I should be tracking it going forward.  I've actually brought in some of this wood and have burned it at night -

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

About a week ago, I shared the latest look at our firewood consumption and included a photo of the small pile of Oak firewood that I've gathered from our yard .  Back in late October of 2019, we had a snow storm that arrived while most of our trees still had all of their leaves on the limbs.  That caused some snow-related damage in the neighborhood and we had a significant limb come down on one of the two large Oak trees in our backyard .  By my count, there were 27 or more rings on the limb , so this thing had been growing for more than a quarter century. In Mid-November, I posted another set of images that included some of the (then) cut up/processed pieces and talked about measuring the moisture in the Oak over time .  At that moment (November 18th), the piece was showing a moisture reading of: 24.5%.  I set that piece aside and am using it for this post today.  I remeasured the moisture content.  On the 'exposed side', where I first measured, and it has dropped alm

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

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 fourth in the series of posts about the Ash trees that were taken down next door that I've been processing with what they call CSS (cutting, splitting and stacking).  And this post brings us full-circle.  From tree to firewood.  Well....I guess, technically, "full-circle" will be when I actually burn this piece.  But...for now, let's call this 'full-circle'. Back in November, I posted a photo of my neighbor's Ash tree with a pattern under the bark .  In that post, I remarked that because they were planning on tearing down the house right next door, I wondered if I could scavenge any of the wood.  After talking to the crew taking down the trees, I ended up with 45-or-so Ash tree rounds.    After a few days of splitting and stacking, I have about 2/3rd of the wood processed and just about a Face Cord of wood put up . And in that post from a few days ago, I mentioned that there were a few pieces that showed off that same pattern we saw on t

A few days ago, I posted a photo showing the newly acquired Ash tree firewood rounds that the tree service left me from the teardown next door .  Today, a quick update on the progress I've made on the pile.  You can see quite a few of the rounds have disappeared.  In that post, I counted 45 or so rounds.  In the photo above, I count 13 Ash rounds and six Mulberry pieces. Where did they go? The answer:  To this new processed firewood stack against the fence in the back part of our yard.  You can see the stack in the photo below.  The firewood is bright and light-colored. I used a combination of a 4# yard axe and a 5# splitting wedge to process these pieces.  Here's a close-up of some of the wood that I split - and you can see few pieces of Mulberry wood (it is the yellowish stuff) in here.  I'll watch and monitor all of this wood for color (and checking) over the next 10 or so months and will post them in here in the garden diary. I picked this spot against the

Remember the post from back in November when I showed off one of my neighbor's poor Ash trees that had been ravaged by the Emerald Ash Borer?   When I posted the photos (with patterns caused by the larvae), I mentioned that since we burn so much wood (and I buy it all!), it might be interesting to see if I could score any of it for free. From that post : Maybe I should go talk to the builders and see if we can harvest some of it for firewood? I have to think that the larvae are long gone, right? We're only moving it 100 feet (so no cross-border movement!) and I would be seasoning it for the better part of a year before we got to burning it next year. Maybe it is something we could burn in out outdoor fireplace exclusively? All wishful/hopeful thinking of course. Welp, wishing and hoping turned into some reality recently.  I happened to be home on the day that the tree company was on site cleaning up the dead trees and managed to talk the crew into dropping some of th

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 has been consumed, too.  If you

This is one of my neighbor's Ash trees.  They have a half-dozen or so that have are dead and still standing.  The photo above is striking for two reasons:  the worm-like pattern that is on the tree is the most noticeable.  But, look closer:  see all the holes?  All over the tree?  That's from the Emerald Ash Borer and why the tree is dead. Here's a closer look at a couple of the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) holes on this tree: There doesn't appear to be any of the Borers hanging around as I presume these trees were killed years ago when the Borer first appeared in Illinois.  The Morton Arboretum suggests that the Emerald Ash Borer is so pervasive that it expects that EVERY Ash Tree in Illinois will be killed .  EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.  What happens when all the Ash trees are gone?  Will the Borers move on?  Fly somewhere else?  Just die off?  Or, will they adapt to the environment and start to attack other species of trees?  That's terrifying. Here (below) is

A couple of days ago, I posted some photos of a snow-downed limb from one of our massive old Oak trees in the yard and mentioned that I was going to cut and begin to dry the limb for firewood. "Cut early.  Burn late." That's what the old-timers say about firewood.  Especially Oak as it takes upwards of a year (or more) to properly season and dry out.  I figured I'd try a little experiment here and monitor how long it would take to dry out and get down to where the seasoned wood that I buy is when it arrives (under 15% moisture ). You can see in the photo above, that this Oak firewood is measuring 24.5% on the C setting of my moisture meter.  I'll try to measure these pieces of Oak over the next year and see if we can establish the timeline for seasoning downed Oak limbs. Below, you can see some of the pile that I've made out of the limb.  Some of it has naturally split while other parts of it are narrow enough to not have to split. I've be

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

The last time I posted in the [ firewood consumption ] diary was back in the very beginning on November of this year.  At that time ( post here ), I had not touched the two 'indoor' racks (indoor meaning inside the screened porch) and had worked my way through about half-way of the outdoor third rack.  Today, I'm documenting where we are right ahead of Christmas. In today's post there's only two photos of the inside racks.  That's because we've totally consumed the outdoor rack in its entirety.  And we're working against the two indoor racks.  The top photo shows where we are in the smaller rack - with about half of that wood consumed.  The bottom portion remaining is Cherry.  Below, the second photo shows the full 'big' rack that shows we've mostly NOT touched this rack with Cherry on top and Birch on the bottom.  Feels like we've gone through about 'half' of the wood, doesn't it?  Last year, we had a Face Cord

Just like I did last year, I'm going to try to track our firewood usage over this Winter in an effort to understand how we are using it and to help plan for next year.  Here's an example of a post I put up in February of this year showing the progress . As a reminder, we had two face cords delivered in mid-September.  One face cord of Cherry.  One of Birch .   And today, you can see that we've made quite a dent in the pile.  The photo above shows the wood pile that is outside that is about half-way down from the top.  And if you look back at the original photos, you'll note that there was a pile on the left that they stacked on the ground .  But, the inside racks are still intact - and not changed.  We've been burning fires almost everyday.  Or every night, I suppose.  We go through three pieces of wood most nights and the weather hasn't been too terribly cold at night.  I'm fearful that we'll blow through our two face cords before winter is ove

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

Just a few days back, I posted a link to these DIY firewood rack brackets that Menards was carrying on their site .  I ordered five sets and got busy working with three of them.  Here, above, is a work-in-progress show that shows the position of one of the racks that I'm building.  This one is the one right outside of the family room door and I've built the rack in a vertical orientation.  I ended up using some rough sawn cedar that was left over from my fence installation, but that move caused some issues.  Turns out, rough sawn cedar 2x4's aren't the same size as normal, dimensional construction lumber.  They're a bit bigger.  Not true two inches by four inches, but bigger by just a hair.  Here's the height difference.  On the left is a traditional, Home Depot bought 2x4.  On the right is a rough sawn Cedar 2x4.  And the thickness difference. I first went to Home Depot and the one by us has just an indoor lumber yard, so they have limited su

Image of firewood rack via Menards (not my photo above) Last year was our first Winter in our house and was also the first year where we ordered a Face Cord of firewood.  I documented that Face Cord - and the location of the rack - here on the blog .  I set up our only rack in our screened porch, where it was covered and protected from the elements.  But last year we didn't have any furniture in the porch, so it was easy to do.  This year?  Nat has set up the room with a full set of furniture and even an indoor/outdoor rug.  So, that means space is limited inside.  At the same time, I've considered firewood rack options - including posting some inspiration here on the blog .  The placement of the rack has been bouncing around in my brain for the better part of the Summer.  I want to put it in a place that is protected from the elements, but not too far from the door because I know I'll want to walk out there in my house shoes to grab wood for the fire.  Also, I know