Why I Oughta...

Back in last October (2022), we had the large Norway Maple tree taken down in our front yard.  The guys who removed the tree chip'd a bunch of the smaller stuff and then hauled all of the larger material back to the far reaches our yard .  I had them put as much of it on the rack that I had back there to begin to dry out.   You can see what the original pile of rounds looked like in this post if you scroll all the way down to the bottom.   Almost as soon as the tree was taken down, I began to split some of the rounds .  Here's a post from November showing some of that work .   I was curious about the moisture content and how long Norway Maple would take to season - as some online suggest it is 'fast'.   By December, I had blown through most of the kiln-dried firewood that I had delivered, so that free'd up the racks by the side of our house.  I decided to move some of the recently-split Maple firewood up there .   Now...five months later (October --> March), wh

The last time that I ran a [ firewood consumption ] check-in for this season was seven weeks ago on December 1st .  At that time - which was 60 days into the burning season - we had emptied the smaller sideyard rack (and replaced it with Norway Maple) and had burned about 1/3rd of the larger one.  The two inside racks were - at that time - mostly full. I consider the burning season to be 5 months long - about 150 days.  October, Nov Dec = 90 days.  Jan, Feb = 60 days.  Total of 150 ending on March 1st.   Where are we today?  115 days out of 150 = 76% thru the season. The most-recent comparison is from this past February when I had quite a bit of wood left.  See this post .  At that point, the two inside racks were full (just like now), the stoop rack was full and there was a pile inside the garage.   Let's look at the racks as they stand today.  First...the two inside racks are, indeed full.  No photos of those.  But, the stoop rack - looks like last February and is 'mostly'

In October, I began to split all the Norway Maple wood that came from the mature tree that we took down in our front yard .  The crew that took the tree down processed the trunk and major limbs into rounds of various lengths and put them up on a rack in the far back of our property.   That work continued in November and December.   In November, I decided to begin to attack some of the large pieces with a splitting wedge to get some smaller pieces that I could split with my axe and that's been really helpful in getting some of the larger pieces processed.  I've used the fact that some of the wood is just sitting on the ground as a sort-of forcing function to compel me to split those pieces first.  They're the largest ones because I couldn't lift them up on the rack due to their weight.  By November 11th, I noted that some of the freshly-split Norway Maple was *VERY* high in moisture with a reading of 50% moisture .  But, a month later, it was already down to 13% .   I di

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,