A Woodpile Essential

I love heating with wood, and I love managing a woodlot. We cut out crooked saplings, fell a few leaners, and cut up fallen trees from thunderstorms and ice-storms. I burn it all, soft or hardwood.

That can get some woodstove owners into real trouble, if they burn too much green wood. Creosote will build up, increasing the chances of a chimney fire.

Most hardwoods take a year to be ready, if you keep them dry. Pine can be ready sooner. That said, I'd not burn a stick if I didn't check it first for moisture content.

Enter the inexpensive moisture meter I picked up from Amazon or eBay (I forget) for under $50.

To burn well, the wood should have less than 20% moisture. I trust Cornell University's advice on this. A reading on a newly cut log of 100%, this site claims, means that a log's weight is half water!

Their information contends that indefinite storage can be managed, but in my experience, wood that is too dry may as well be cardboard. It goes up fast and bright without generating too many BTUs. I discovered that with an estate-sale load of firewood, mostly white oak, that I got at $20 for a full cord. It burned but the lightness of the wood told me it had been stored for many years. I was happy to be rid of it.  The R value was less than year-old pine.

Conversely, a few years back we bought half a cord of red oak that was under-seasoned. It was the first heating season in 10 where I had to buy some wood. We did not have our meter then, so I mixed the oak with seasoned wood and waited for spring, rather anxiously, since we didn't want to run our furnace and spend money that way.

The following fall, the remaining red oak burned bright and hot, and it warmed our house well. Still, I don't want to buy from that seller of "seasoned" wood again. He haphazardly covered his piles, and that's not enough to properly season wood, without air circulation.

So I recommend something like our Tavtool. I use it in the woodpile and check several sticks on the sides and the ends. The ranges vary considerably, and the values on the scope tend too rise as one goes deeper into the log. At first, this reading was 13% but it dropped fast as the tool wiggled. Still, it's in the right range to burn.

The images show a log from a small tree that came down a year ago in an ice storm. We cut and stacked it in March, in a south-facing shelter that holds about 1/4 cord of wood (4' high by 2' deep by 8' long). Here's the end of the same log.

I have never seen readings vary more than a per-cent or two, unless one part of the log had been rained on. If you are unsure, split a piece and measure inside one of the pieces. That will give you a heartwood reading.

Finally, keep your wood dry. We build wood-boxes out of construction scraps. Shelter is key to good firewood, as is stacking for air circulation. Piles on the ground can molder even if covered with tarps and around here, harbor Copperheads in the warm months. No thank you.

 

May your woodpiles stay dry until Spring. And it's not too early to start stacking wood for 2023-24. We've burned about 2 cords, down from last year, but I need to replace them and one more to have the barn and wood-boxes full.

Apple-Tree Pruning

I am rather astounded that so far in Tractorpunk I have not said a word about apple trees. Perhaps it was humility; a few years and two classes later, I am only starting to understand the principles of managing a few trees.  My trees all looked like the mess shown above, at first.

The rewards of good pruning are immense; there are few locally grown foods with more lore, and more taste, than a good apple.  I began my quest to raise apples with a few varieties purchased from Albemarle Cider Works south of Charlottesville; we planted three trees in a fenced area near three very neglected older trees, intending to bring them all into production. Earlier we'd put two more in a very wild location, a seldom-visited meadow in Buckingham County, where I once saw a mama bear and her three cubs dining on the fruit from a pear tree. At least we'd feed the bears there.

Over the past few years I have attended two pruning workshops. I've learned that must be patient with apple trees, and some pruning must be done annually and carefully. In time apples can be harvested every year, even with the organic methods I currently use. I may eventually resort to one spraying of the fungicide Captan, after bloom and pollen-collection, each year. Otherwise I will just fertilize and maintain the trees.  Our climate in Central VA is changing, whatever some politicians ignorantly claim, in ways that may not permit apple-growing in a decade or so. In the mean time, I'll see what happens.

This time of year, the earliest part of Spring, is best for pruning. Much of what I learned about pruning can be found here, but here are a few other things I have discovered. 

1) Pruning really does help with blight. Our older trees were full of "Shepherd's Crooks" and blackened foliage, indicating Fire Blight. It's hard to eradicate with organic methods, but not impossible.

Last year I pruned all three trees heavily and cleaned up all the debris, then put it in the landfill in a plastic bag. I was told by an orchard manager that burning the trimmings can just make blight-spores go airborne again! Tools have to be clean, so I reach for rubbing alcohol and wipe the blades of pruners and pruning saw frequently, or I make a 1/9 solution of bleach and water and dip the tools frequently in a bucket.

2) Do not fertilize too much. Pruning makes one want to put down fruit-tree fertilizer, but that can be counterproductive. My reading indicates that fertilizing after heavy pruning will produce water-sprouts and lots of foliage growth; such young growth is susceptible to Fire Blight, one of the factors that led me to prune in the first place. Also lots of new leaves in the wrong places block sunlight and air from getting into the center of the tree, something essential for good health.

3) Could a little kid climb your tree? The answer should be "yes." I loved that bit of advice from our extension agent. Here the goal is to make a tree with an open center and not too many branches.

I aim to create a "vase shape" such as in this illustration from Stark Brothers.

While my trees did not get as severe a pruning as shown on the left, I did cut them hard again this  year.  This close-up shows how crossed and cluttered the branches were on a five-year-old tree we planted in Buckingham County and have only pruned one time before:

 

After pruning this tree, it's probably too long at the ends, but now the tree has room for air circulation and light. Next year I'll step back the main branches to keep them from getting too long; long thin branches often break under the weight of fruit.

4) Apple trees are tough. In the classes I took, the extension agents and apple growers stressed that many novices are terrified of pruning, yet trees can bounce back from poor cuts.

In my case, I am certain not all of my cuts are right, especially high in the trees where I cannot get a close look at the buds. There I use a pole pruner. Where it is safe to climb a pruned tree, I will step up to the first branching of major limbs and inspect, or lean a small ladder against a tree. Mostly I use my Felco #2 pruners or a set of bypass loppers, keeping them sharp always with a few passes from a Bergamo sharpening stone I found at One Scythe Revolution.

Snowstorm in The Country

I had the bad luck to be on a suburban commercial six-lane the night before our big storm of the winter hit. The traffic around the grocery stores was hellish. Even the day before, when I did a little shopping, I found nearly no milk or bread at two stores I regularly visit.

Being well-stocked on both, I just shrugged. I did, however, snag fatayer, lavash pita, and some kibbie at my Mediterranean grocer. One can never be too prepared for a Southern blizzard, a rare-enough event to make folks get a little crazy.  I got in my usual quips in person and online about my favored season to folks who'd just as soon have our state's climate resemble Florida's.

Not me. For a day or two, I can revel in weather that is not all about making us feel comfortable, weather that shows us the universe is not about us and cares little for us, yet is pure and lovely in that indifference. The snow began after 9am, about the time I put up my wife's car in the garage and helped her get a little shelter ready for our flock of pullets, just beside the little coop the four of them use. The older hens, who are just beginning to mingle with the new girls, have a fancy shelter we built  last year, but they are not the sort to be sharing.

As I write this I think we have about 8 to 9 inches on the ground, not bad for 13 hours of snowfall with many more hours of snow on the way. Weather sites online were full of photos like this one I snagged from weather.com, of stores practically looted by folks who would only be in their houses, at best, for a day or two. A month ago, shelf-pegs at our locally owned hardware store were groaning with unsold snow shovels. The temperature then was in the 70s. Now I'm betting those cheap shovels have sold out.

The differences in city and country behavior have taught me a lot, every time it snows. We do not loot the stores here, and drivers generally know how and when to employ four-wheel drive. I try to fit in, but I had lessons long before I moved out to the sticks. Most of my life I was a city boy, but my dad, who was never handy in other ways, always had a knack for being prepared. He was the only man on our block who found decent drinking water during Hurricane Camille in 1969, when Richmond had no potable water for weeks and the Army brought in tanker trucks of foul-tasting stuff. Dad said he never wanted a shovel that would break, so he bought two excellent shovels I still own, 35 years later. I repainted them this summer and rubbed Danish oil into the handles.

My own preparations began a few days ago, getting our last big unsplit logs into the barn to dry out a bit, moving split and seasoned wood up the porch, and putting finishing touches on a greenhouse where I'll start plants for our LLC in just a few weeks.  I ran a last load of wood up to the porch in the first snow, checked our root shelter for mice--we've bagged three since my last post--and tidied up the house while watching the wonder outside.

Partly I do these chores to focus me. I think that is why the ritual of looting the supermarket happens, too. It might be too much, emotionally, to think about what Nature tells us about our little personal lives during a blizzard or hurricane.

It can be depressing to think that we fade as fast as fallen snow after the temperature rises. No, I am not at peace with that. Things might end in ice, Robert Frost said in his poem, yet for me ice does not suffice. It does, however, make me appreciate Spring.

Everything ends in ice, according to The Second Law of Thermodynamics. It's daunting to consider that hypothetical ninth plant that astronomers are now hunting, way out beyond the Sun's Kuiper Belt. Its orbit is so distant that Planet Nine could take between 10 and 20 thousands years to circle the sun.  Any snow that far out is not just water and it is eternal.

After that sort of pondering, plowing the driveway and drinking some hot chocolate are more than welcome. Those are things I can influence.