Why I Oughta...

Do you have a pile of Norway Maple firewood laying around?  Processed (into rounds) or unprocessed.  Split or unsplit.  I don't think it matters.   What doesn't matter, Jake?   I don't think it matters if you've done everything you can to Norway Maple firewood to get it dry and seasoned.  You'll still have some fungus growth.  See below for a peek at the mushrooms that are growing on some of my Norway Maple that I've been working through since last Fall: We had this large Maple tree taken down last Fall and I started to split the rounds immediately .  I've worked through a bunch of it (not all, though) in the 12 months since.  I've stored the wood up on racks to keep it off the ground and it hasn't mattered. I've even measured the moisture content .   Note...this pile is NOT covered.  But, it still gets mushrooms.   #20 on my 2023 to-do list was to finish processing this wood.   Have I done that?  Nope.  But, I was able to get a bunch of it done

I might have jumped the gun.  With what, you ask?  The moisture reading on the recently split Norway Maple firewood.  As a reminder, we had a very large Norway Maple (that was in a bad state of decline) removed from our front yard this Fall .  I had the wood processed into rounds and brought to the back of our property to begin to dry out.  By the end of October, I started to split the rounds .  And they were HEAVY and wet.  (or....as they say in the firewood business:  'green').  I wanted to track how fast this Norway Maple firewood would dry out and become 'seasoned' enough to be able to burn.  The pros say that you need to get the moisture level down below 20% to be dry-enough to burn properly.  F rom the time that I began to split the wood to 18 days later (2.5 weeks), I was reading the moisture level to be 50% .   Now...if you read any of the firewood online forums, you'll see that A LOT of people claim that Norway Maple (or...some folks call it Box Elder wood)

A few days ago, I posted some photos and an update on my annual firewood consumption and speculated that I was moving faster than I needed to (in terms of burning) and that without some intervention, I would likely consume my entire stockpile of firewood before the end of the burning season - March 1st, 2023.  In that post , I talked about how I might extend my supply by cutting in some of the recently-split Norway Maple firewood from the large tree in our front yard that we took down.   It was just a couple of weeks ago that one of my fresh, just recently-split pieces of Norway Maple was registering 50% on my moisture meter .  Norway Maple has a reputation of being VERY fast drying and gets down to sub-20% moisture very quickly.  But, how quickly?   Here's what the moisture meter is showing on a few different pieces of this same Norway Maple firewood after just 2+ weeks: What the what?  13 and 14 percent?  Anything under 20 is ready to be burned.  So, does that mean I can start t

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 larger one is about 1/3rd used.  If you look at the photo below, you

I've gone about splitting, stacking and seasoning firewood in different bursts (of activity) over the past few years.  Usually, I process, split, stack the wood during the winter months in preparation for Fall/next Winter burning.  Here's a look at some January 2021 winter-time splitting .  I've done this with a splitting axe.  But, the Norway Maple rounds that I recently put on the new rack in the backyard are different than what I've dealt with previously.  Some of these rounds are *so* big and *so* heavy that I can't really move them, let alone put them up on a block to begin splitting.  So, the axe has worked, but it has mostly - what I call - 'nibbled' around the edge.  You can see those results here from the end of October where there are a lot of thin slices.   My Dad recommended that I try a splitting wedge on the very big, borderline immovable rounds.  The theory is that the wedge can split them in-place and by removing 1/2 to 3/4 of the wood in se

I mentioned that I started to split some of the Norway Maple tree firewood that resulting from the removal of the large tree in our front yard.  In a post a couple weeks ago, I talked about how I've started to split some of the larger rounds with my axe.  I've taken a slow-but-steady approach to the project and will continue to split this wood over the next few months.  The first splits resulted in pieces that I am putting up on a rack to season for the year.  I did, however, want to begin to track the moisture content of this freshly cut, green wood.  Here, below, is a photo of my moisture meter showing 50% moisture in this piece:  The moisture level that split, dry firewood needs to get to in order to be considered 'seasoned' is below 20% - so we have a long way to go.  Norway Maple is known for 'drying quickly' , so I'll test this theory by trying to track these freshly split pieces in the coming weeks/months.  Will it be ready this season?  I doubt it,

As I mentioned in the post showing how we had our Norway Maple tree removed , we had the wood processed into rounds.  16 to 18" rounds.  That I could split as they dried out.  I wanted to see how hard these were going to be, so I put one of the larger rounds up on another one and began chopping with my axe.  I was able to split the round into about 40 different pieces.  Knowing I pay between 25 and 40 cents per piece of firewood, that means that one round processed into about $12-$15 of firewood.  Currently unseasoned firewood, but....still...firewood.  Here, below, is a look at the wood that came from just ONE round split by hand: As I empty out one of the racks close to the house, I'll start to fill it with this Norway Maple split wood.  Based on what I read on the Web, it doesn't take long for Norway Maple to season from green to 20% in six to eight weeks . That means...that we'll be able to burn this stuff THIS SEASON if I run out of wood.  

Back in the of last year, I took a bunch of rounds from hardwood trees that our neighbor took down to build their house .  That pile was mostly Ash trees, but there were also a few Mulberry rounds that were included.  I didn't really know what they were, but after I identified that Mulberry tree - I processed it the same way as the Ash.  However, that Mulberry was alive when they took it down and that meant that it was heavy and wet.  And...weirdly yellow.  I split it over a number of months this past Winter and by March, I had all that I was going to split up do ne for the Winter with just a few larger pieces left.  If you look at the bottom photo of this post , you'll see what the wood looked like when split.  In April, I started to work through a few more rounds including more Mulberry and found a yellow heartwood with purple under the bark . Fast forward to today.  The pile that I had stacked came tumbling down a month or so back.  It wasn't stable, so one day, I f

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 -

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