Semi-Sufficent? Is that Enough?

I've written here about the folly of trying to be self-sufficient, instead turning to the notion of self-reliance, an Emersonian virtue I embrace.

Recently I read a fine post from Kirsten Lie-Nielsen, a homesteader, that she and her spouse have left farming largely behind, at least as a full-time, rural venture. This experience, one where she attempted to become an influencer but met hostility for her left-wing political views, gave me pause about how I approach rural life. 

These words in particular strike me as wisdom: 

We have no aspirations towards self-sufficiency, but a desire to experience varied aspects of life while remaining connected to our food sources. I now have a set of skills I can draw on if I find myself in the kind of calamitous situation that sections of the homesteader community are prepping for. I feel a deep appreciation for the labor of food production. I’ve also learned to embrace the freedom of progress.

When this blog began, I thought that I might use my writing skills to follow the path of a farmer like Joel Salatin. Now I've my doubts, and not because Salatin and I are very different animals when it comes to politics and religion. I deeply respect the way he manages the property at Polyface Farms, and I've had two nice chats with him about how one can run a farm sustainably. I no longer follow his blog, however, because of right-wing extremism and Doomerism, mostly by his readers, a similar pattern that led me away from another writer who once used to visit my classes to discuss his work. 

In case of a national disaster, no one is an island, no matter how many generators, solar panels, firearms, or cans of food on hand. Only community and self-reliance might ease the troubles, though I'd prefer we search for ways to avoid them altogether.  

I'll employ a simple example of semi-sufficiency here: the other day, my brother-in-law and I skidded two 12' long poplar logs out of the woods. A huge twin-trunked tree had split in a storm; we wanted to save part of it for his sawmill. Poplar is a delightful wood to work. I've made a good bit of weatherboard for our farmhouse from trees we cut, milled, and planed in years past.

I could never handled that sort of job alone. We used two saws to cut the logs (for when one saw gets pinched and stuck; it happened once to me). We then used a long cable and electric winch to skid the logs across a wet-weather stream at the back of our property, with me walking beside the skidway with a Peavey Tool to roll the logs around when they got caught on something. Finally, I got on my tractor and hauled the logs the final distance to a trailer.

No one person I know could do this. With my spouse still recovering from a broken leg, she couldn't help. So in hard times, who can you count on to help with rural work? My other best helper, who lives nearby, voted for the other side, but we get on well.

Community, despite adversity and personal differences, keeps the Amish on the land, but influencers have followers, not co-workers.

That's the mistake too many misty-eyed homesteaders make who want to be famous. 

From "Tree of No Use" to Useful Tree

 

I've written here many times about the Stinking Sumac / Tree of Paradise / Alianthus. I've yet to find a use for it, but there's another tree that many of us dislike that I've come to appreciate, the Sweet Gum. It has those sticky balls that sadistic children would throw at each other or (slowly raises hand) would shoot out of a slingshot.

I don't bean anyone with the tree's seed pods any longer, but I do burn the wood. Yes, I use a tree that many folks who heat with wood toss into the ravine. The wood is hard to split when green, and not much better when seasoned; the grain is crazy, the fibers clingy. It's not a wood to split by hand. But then I have 27 tons worth of splitting power in our gasoline-powered Trobilt.

Gum is supposed to stink when burned. True, if not seasoned. I spoke to my chimney-cleaner, a Good Ol' Boy who knows his wood. Cut it in the winter when the sap is not flowing, then split it right away gum can be burned in 9 months. In other seasons, one needs to wait a year and yes, that wood will give off an aroma. Use a moisture meter to be sure the wood is ready, to avoid creosote in your chimneys.

 I have been burning some of it lately, from a tree that fell in a summer storm in 2023. It gives off a woodsy smell that I get outdoors. Our stove is too efficient to let that scent into the house.

Numbers like the ones from the University of Kentucky do not lie. There's something to be said for Gum. It has a heating value in BTUs higher than pine. We don't all have a ready supply of Hickory or Osage Orange or White Oak. I get a good amount of Oak, but Sweet Gum is so plentiful here! The tree shrugs off urban pollution and drought, though on the down side it does like to shed limbs in storms.

Why does Gum have such a bad rep? I think it's the pain-in-the-butt nature of splitting it, if done by hand.

So don't toss that gum. Find someone who heats with wood and offer it. I'm reminded of "The Tree of No Use" from the writings of one of my old-school influencers, Zhuang Zhou the Taoist philosopher. That tree yielded nothing but shade: no fruit, no wood good for burning. And it lived a long time.

So will our gums, in the era of climate change.

Chainsaw Logic: That One Little Wire...

I think this post constitutes part of a series. I've written often here about Occam's Razor, and in this instance it and the old "For the Want of a Nail" allegory.  

It's easy to forget the simple, in our age of wonders, how one simple technical issue can make everything stop. Right now, I am streaming a BBC World Cafe concert with Gillan Welch and David Rawlings. My 1980 self could not even fathomed that as possible.

It's a form of magic, following the precepts of Clarke's Law. Remember, "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." We get baffled when the technomancy suddenly halts, the screen locking up or the phone "bricking," even a damned advertisement on the YouTube concert-feed popping up mid-song, despite my ad-blocker. The spell is broken, though in my case that stupid ad lead me to the NPR ad-free original. 

Until we fix things, we sit like our primate ancestors before a sacred stone, bewildered at the departure of our gods. Yet sometimes we can bring fallen technological deities back to life.

Recently a friend of my wife's had an enormous Red Oak tree fall in her yard, nearly hitting her house. It would have totaled the place, frankly. now it lays in her yard, some 70' of tree with 40' being straight and nearly 36" in diameter. It's what furniture-makers would call a "veneer log" for the lack of hollow core, lack of limbs, and straightness. Yet we cannot get any log buyer to look. Apparently these folk want a bunch of such logs (worth several thousand dollars each) before driving out.

After inspecting the tree, I came back with my little "firewood" saw and The Big Dog, a $1000 Husqvarna 365 with 5hp and a 20" bar.  I had planned to keep the beast the rest of my life.

"Woof Woof!" said this Big Dog, until it would not bark for me, let alone start. 

I gnashed my teeth. I pulled at my beard, having no hair on my skull. I cursed the gods of Sweden and two-stroke internal combustion, to no avail. I considered the expense of even a diagnosis at the dealer, looked at (heresy!) a $500 Stihl "Farm Boss" saw, ready to spend MORE money. 

No. I was doing what an academic colleague calls "catastrophizing failure," meaning that I assumed a small setback would lead to an utter and permanent disaster. 

Realizing then where I went wrong, I began replacing Husqvarna parts myself, starting with the simplest parts and least expensive that can lock up a saw: a new spark plug, a kill switch, then an ignition coil. Still, Occam failed me. The saw would not even "burp." A second wave of self-doubt followed as I watched more YouTube "how to" chainsaw videos by burly men with Southern US, Scottish, or Scandinavian accents.

Then $30 later, I fixed the saw and it fired right up. Even that 30 could have stayed in the bank. I checked the electronics, working backward, to my new spark plug. What if the wire that attaches to the plug had turned sideways when I pressed on the rubber "boot" that covers the end of the plug? 

With a razor blade I cut open enough of the cover to see that the wire loop connected to the plug. It's the little metal piece shown in the image at the top of the post. I slipped it over the plug. Then I pulled the cord.

"Woof! VROOM!" The Big Dog barked!

I've learned from working on engines a little bit, whether on old tractors or late-model cars: a single wire can bring done tons of working metal. So can a pinched gas line. So once again, Occam proved right in the end. This is why we pay a mechanic 25 cents for a screw, and $50 for knowing which screw to replace.

Now back to that tree. I just felled a section the size of a normal tree in 30 seconds, a task impossible with my firewood saw. 

Never give up working on stuff. A fix may be simpler than it seems. And now I have some spare parts for the saw. 

I was about to put the saw on a pagan altar and make offerings to it. Clarke was right but so was Occam. Keep moving up the chain of causality to the problem, and one can fix nearly any machine (and maybe large societal or environmental woes, as well).

The Forgotten(?) Art of Pollarding Trees

Topping trees to encourage growth has a bad name among tree fanciers like me. The conventional wisdom that it shortens the life of a shade tree has a lot of merit, but then again, don't we prune trees constantly?

As I do most of my heavy pruning in winter, especially late winter, I wanted to talk about a time-honored way of harvesting firewood without cutting down an entire tree. I've begun to practice it in my own woodlot. 

The photo above, from the Wikipedia entry on pollarding, shows a beech in Epping Forest, England. In the old world, where ancient forests long vanished, second-growth trees needed careful management to avoid vanishing. Legal rights to pollard a certain amount of wood were granted to locals.

Pollarding provides a safe and sustainable method, and carefully pollarded trees can live a very long time. The beech above has not been cut in a many decades, whereas a regularly pollarded tree will not produce the huge side branches shown.  For those working with willow for crafts, pollarding leads to a nigh-endless supply of material.

I use pollarding on our fence-lines, where gums, poplars, and other shade trees occur. Some I cut down to a stub 3  or 4 feet in height. The trunks get cut into small rounds for the woodstove, after seasoning a  year. The branches and twig I drag away to make brush-piles at the edge of the woods, to shelter wildlife. Sometimes I pollard very long stems to make beanpoles.

Pines, of course, cannot be pollarded, and once cut, do not return. I knew that but didn't know it as an ancient threat by Croesus from the Persian/Greek wars. Thanks, Herodotus.

If you burn wood in  your fire-pit, fireplace, or wood stove but live where you don't have a ready supply of large logs, you may want to begin pollarding trees. You might find it most handy for trees under power-lines as well. Keeping them short avoids the sort of awful slash/pruning power-companies often do to protect infrastructure. Pollarding provides a way to keep a tree like that gracefully shaped.

 

Image courtesy Wikipedia

Figs, Figs, Everywhere

My grandfather Sam spent most of his life trying to grow figs, before climate change made it ridiculously easy in our bioregion.

That is the one good thing I will ever say about global warming.

This time of year, my nephew Mike Ryan (as big a madman as I am) will text me with a "hey, Uncle Cheapass! I want them damn figs!" and I deliver, delighted that one person in my extended family at least loves fresh figs as much as my grandfather and dad did. Or as much as my wife and I do now.

Growing fig trees is not that hard, once they get established. Chicago Hardy is a variety that works well here. Further south Brown Turkey is a good bet.

But what to do with the thousands--and I am not kidding--of figs that even four trees can produce in a year? Here's the plan, Stan.

 And where do we go for ideas about how to deal with lots of excess fruit or veg? Why the National Center for Home Food Preservation, of course!

They feature the best canning recipe ever for fig jam. Even non-canners could make this one work. It cans in a boiling-water bath in 5-10 minutes, depending upon the size jar.

We have not bought jam in years, in consequence. Plant some fig trees and give it a try. Sam would be so happy to know that folks are growing figs. Once you get in the habit, you'll never let it go.

That Mighty Fine Old Hose

 Joke coming. Leave now if you wish.

"How many Virginians does it take to change a light bulb?"

"Only one to change it and five more to talk about how mighty fine that old bulb was!"

Lots of truth here. So when a 40-year-old garden hose finally gave up the ghost, I had my next blog post.

My father passed 21 years ago, and that seems like yesterday. He bought a house in 1975, on Fitzhugh Avenue in the near West End of the City of Richmond, and I only lived there for four years before college, but I came back for a year and a half after. Those were very happy years for us all. About that time, in 1984 or so, he redid the yard and went to a local hardware store. He bought the best garden hose they offered. "Real rubber!" he said, still house-proud a decade later. He as no yard-guy, but he believed in keeping up appearances on a block where the neighbors often went all-out for their little 1/3 acre city yards.  That hose was astounding; it coiled up naturally without kinks and was easily to move around.

Yes, a mighty fine hose it was.

I miss the old man immensely, for all his difficult personality tics. After a life of hard toil behind the wheel of a truck he'd made it, owning a produce warehouse with his cousin Leroy. He was a beloved boss, too. Maybe he treated his employees so well because he remembered terrible privation.

He grew up in desperate poverty in the Great Depression, served in the Navy during World War II, raised a family with my mom in a little row-house. A detached two-story home in a neighborhood full of assistant bank-managers and insurance salesmen, with an Olds or Buick out front? The American Dream. I miss that too. It's gotten so super-sized since dad's day. I am rather glad he's not around to see things now.

That old red hose? It moved with us after mom passed away, and I used it for years until we moved to the country in 2012. Then it served well in our garden, with some fraying finally catching up to it near the end. I used a special leak-stop tape but that only bought me a  year. This summer, the old hose had to go.

Why do we fret over material things so much? In my case, that old hose told a story that only mom and I knew, and maybe my oldest sister. Sis and I are the only ones left. Now I am telling you.

Funny thing, though. This tale has an ending not only happy but sustainable. We found that most of the old hose is just fine, still flexible and intact as ever. I cut off 10 bad feet or so, then another 20 good feet from the far end. That length will help me water trees, attached to the water tank I carry around in my UTV for saplings when the weather here goes into a prolonged dry spell.

 

If the hose lasts four more decades, it will outlive me. And there the story will end, happily in fact.

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.

Chainsaw Logic, Part II

In January, I wrote of my feelings concerning Stihl and Husqvarna saws. Now I'm ready for a farm-yard necessity: a second saw.  

It's a good idea to have two chainsaws handy when you cut as much wood as we do, and of course trees fall across roads regularly in hurricanes and ice storms. If one saw fails, the other can be brought right out. We did this for years, and in winter, when our Stihl saws could act up, I loved having a backup chainsaw.

2022 brought down at least 20 trees on our Buckingham County Property, across all the farm roads. Those are the ones I can see. I suspect more than 50 will have fallen, by the time we re-open the back road to our upper field.

Sadly for my wood stove but luckily for the forest, most are pines. I'll cut, season, and burn the pine mixed with hardwood to maintain a good burn temperature and avoid creosote.

Wood cutting with my current "Husky" is just not going to do this job. So several of their larger saws, ranging in price from $800 to $1400, are in contention.

First off, for most home-owners and casual sawyers, a small saw like my current one will be more than anyone needs. You can see other tips at my earlier post. And for your safety, please read this guide for using a saw from The University of Missouri's extension service. With hurricane season coming, there will be many emergency-room trips for new saw-owners. Do not become one of them.

Yet there comes a point when only a bigger saw can do the trick.  I'm still not ready to buck and fell large trees, a job best left to a professional. But our situation in Buckingham remains in my realm of experience, with the right tool in hand (both hands).

What is "bigger"? In a saw, it does not mean a longer bar but a more powerful engine. With that power, however, comes weight. Let's consider stats for two saws I may purchase as soon as next week:

• Husquvarna 572 XP: 5.3 hp, max torque 8200 rpm, 14.5 lbs.
• Husquvarna  372 XP X-Torq: 5.5 hp, max torque 6600 rpm, 14.6 lbs.
  

Both feature a 20" bar though longer ones can be had (and are not of interest to me). My current saw, a 440, has an 18" bar and gets categorized as a "residential" rather than professional model. It weighs 9.7 pounds and has 2.4 hp. It suffices for cutting limbs and firewood, as well as felling small trees (a foot or less in diameter and perhaps 30' tall). 

Both of the contenders are a LOT heavier than my current saw, which means no lifting the saw high. It's unwise to use a saw by reaching up above one's shoulder, in any case. 

Most of my heavy-duty cutting involves keeping the saw's center of gravity below belly height. I learned early to "let the saw do the work" by never pushing on a saw; that's a recipe to get the bar pinched or worse, have it kick back right at your face. Keeping the saw low avoids exhaustion, in any case. Gravity becomes friend.

Of one thing I'm certain: I want their pre-computer models. I've already had a long telephone conversation with one of my dealer's salespeople. Their newest saws promise smoother power and lower emissions but are not user-friendly to a DIY mechanic like me. That means I cannot replace key parts like a carburetor. I'd depend upon service, likely expensive service, at the shop.  If the X-Torq system (which does lower emissions and fuel consumption) can be had without too many electronics, one of these saws will be coming home with me.

If I were to go the really high-tech route, I'd consider their professional-grade electric saws, but I need to learn a lot more about Husqvarna's battery tech first. I dislike being what I call a "Dewalt orphan" with a bunch of 18V cordless tools for which the maker no long makes replacement batteries. In consequence I have to source re-manufactured battery packs from China. These replacements work until they don't.

I will continue this series as I get a new saw and put it to work stacking logs. As noted in my first post, the old saw is not going to be idle. It already got its annual tune up: new fuel pickup, spark plug, and air filter. Now is the time for a second chain in the case and maybe a new bar. I'll have my dealer look at the old 440 when I go shopping.

Stay safe in the woods. The dealer does not stock new arms or legs.

Chainsaw Logic, Part I

 

So it's winter. We get ice storms and heavy, wet snow that brings down limbs, entire trees. As in hurricane season, this weather sends people who have never owned a chainsaw to big-box stores to buy them.

For many, the next stop becomes an emergency room. Or a graveyard.

But this post is not about safety with saws; it's about the saw to buy if you really think you need one. I've been using a chain saw regularly for over 15 years, a blink of any eye by the standards of my wife's family. I'm still too much a novice to fell any tree bigger around than my leg and 30' tall. After that, I call my brother-in-law. Larger trees that fall I do cut up, even making them roll where I want them. That trick for the experienced sawyer is not something to be handled in this post, either.

No, I want to discuss a topic as sensitive as Ford v. Chevy for pickup owners or Deere v. International when it comes to tractors. I'm thinking Stihl v. Husqvarna.

Why these two?

These two brands are considered premium saws; so is Echo, but I've no experience with the brand, though it's been highly recommended to me.  Down-market brands might be fine for occasional use, and much of what I recommend would still apply.

Three years back, I switched brands to a "Husky" after I found my Stihls hard to operate in cold weather and fiddly to service. Briefly, there are some strengths and weaknesses for either saw:

• Stihls tend to cost a bit less, and have a larger dealer network in my part of the country.
• Stihls have a reputation for more power in the same size saw.
• Husvarnas are simpler machines, especially the starting method and electrics. I found myself constantly needing to remove the carb cover on my Stihls to adjust things.
• My Stihls were harder to start, and I run all my saws on ethanol-free 93 octane, mixed properly with 2-cycle oil. I run about 3 gallons of gas through my saws and weed whackers each year (operating on average a couple of times monthly for the saws, weekly for the other tools in warm weather).
  
• Stihls have really weak gas caps that break easily and two bolts to hold the bar that are easily stripped if you over-torque them. Husqvarnas have a single bolt that goes into metal, not plastic.
• My Husqvarna needs more attention to keep the chain tight than did my Stihl. Since it's wise to check the chain regularly, this seems not much of a bother. I stop the saw occasionally, check the chain tension, then adjust as needed.
  
• The Husqvarna chain-brake system is as safe as Stihl's, but it will break if you try to remove the saw cover with the brake set (I did just that and ordered a new cover).

Much of what I've found has been seconded by another writer.  In the end, and despite its caveats, I'll buy another Husky. I'm going to get a slightly larger saw for "bucking and felling" medium trees.  

So what about an electric saw? Stihl has a really nice line of light-duty tools that run on batteries. We have one of the weed-whackers. 

I'm not sure such a saw would work for me, but they do offer the advantage of not fiddling with gasoline, carbs, or cold-weather starting problems.  They can still maim or kill you.

When you use a saw...

Other things I have learned about running chainsaws: 

•  Most homeowners can do just fine with a 16" bar and a light duty saw for cutting limbs up or fallen logs for firewood. I've only recently moved up to a slightly more powerful saw.
• If you have NEVER used a saw, find out if the extension service offers classes. Here's a sample from New Hampshire. And buy from a dealer, not a big-box. Stihl only sells from dealers. Dealers will start the machine to check function and may give you some free lessons.
  
• Stop working as soon as you get tired. Otherwise, you may not live to saw another log.
• Invest in sawyer's chaps and a forestry helmet, for God's sake. Spending another $200 may save you from serious injury or worse. 
  
• One cold-weather tip: bring the saw inside the night before use, though not into the house. A garage or shed above freezing should do.
  
• A sharp chain is safer than than a dull one. I bought a bench-top electric sharpener for under $300, and I touch up my saw's chain regularly. I also own a spare chain and swamp them out when one gets dull. If you don't cut as much wood as I do, your dealer will sharpen a chain for a few dollars.
  
• 93 octane no-ethanol fuel should be the choice, and if it cannot be found, go with 93 and remove all the gas when done sawing. Ethanol forms crystals in the fuel lines of small engines, and its best to run the saw dry to be sure not a drop remains. I run my mowers and weed-whackers on Ethanol-free 93 as well.
• For the very occasional user, Stihl makes this fuel premixed in metal cans. It's pricey but will keep a while. Most folks would not need more than a gallon per year.  
• Every year, change the spark plug, filter in the gas tank, and the air filter. These tune-up kits can be found at a dealer or ordered online. Never scrimp on this annual chore.  
• When the saw's bar gets worn it's time to replace it. I can find them for around $40. A good bar will ensure better operation and safety. You don't want a chain to jump off a running saw, even with a chain brake to save you.
  
• Your saw may prove an exception, but don't expect a modern chainsaw to last more than a decade. These modern machines are cleaner and more complex than the 1950s and 60s Pollans my father-in-law used. Those saws had no safety features and scared the hell out of me.

Final word: the next time some old-timer, actual or wannabe, says that old saws were superior, just remind him (it's always a guy) that the hardware store sells new saws but does not stock arms and legs.

Combustion v. Capacity for Firewood: If it Burns, Burn it! Part Two

Some time back, I discussed the ways to properly burn really old wood, softwood that is seasoned, and less desirable hardwoods. Let's revisit that idea, as recently someone worried recently that I do indeed burn pine.  It can be safe to do, but you'll have to season it and burn a lot more wood in an year.  The numbers bear it out.

I will revert to my failed attempt to be an engineer, just for a moment.  Values follow for the combustion values of different types of firewood. Here are a few that I burn, copied from an excellent resource with many types of wood listed:

• White Oak: 47.2, 4010, 25.7
• White Pine: 26.3, 2240, 14.3

The first number gives density (pounds per cubic foot) of dry wood, the second the weight of a dry cord. The third measures heat value in millions of BTUs/dry cord.

A cord, incidentally, means closely stacked pile 8' x 4' x 4'.

Imagine a pile of logs, closely stacked, 32' long by 4' wide by 4' wide: four cords is what I project to burn by mid-March, when our heating needs ease to "morning and after dinner warm ups."  By early April, we'll stop. Yet we barely have enough wood in the barn, because we are home more, all day for me, during the pandemic. My wife retires this year, so next winter, she'll be around all day. 

 Where to find all those BTUs?

Hickory and Hornbeam are even better heaters than oak, but I don't have access to either in any quantity. Poplar, a common hardwood on our land, does not rate a listing but it's a light soft wood and closer to pine than oak. Maple, somewhat plentiful and Beech, more plentiful still, fall much closer to oak. Naturally, I try to mix in the softer stuff with the harder wood, to get the stove to its peak efficiency.

With pine, I need 1.8 cords to equal 1 cord of white oak, if I want the same heating value. Red Oak, a tree we have and I love to see in the forest for its stately height and shape, is not close to White Oak but more efficient than White Pine. Not all Pines are equal, either. Learning to identify trees provides a nice side-effect of learning to run a wood stove.

Firewood when purchased should be hardwood and seasoned, period. Don't pay for pine unless that's the only thing that grows in your area; many Canadians and Scandinavians have managed to stay alive for many winters burning it. I only use it because I cut so much of it, maintaining our property, often after a huge pine falls in a storm. Gradually, we are eliminating all pines on the edges of our roads.

For the outdoor fire pit? Pick up anything dry off the ground. Use what is left over in the barn. As farmer and friend Dominic, paterfamilias at delli Carpini Farms, likes to say "If it burns, burn it!"

Whatever the wood, the goals are simple when heating a building: avoid a chimney fire from creosote buildup and, as a distant second, not run out of wood. At worst, dealers will deliver but it's going to cost more in what passes for deep winter in Central Virginia. One retired neighbor runs a firewood business, but it pains me to buy wood.

Our house will stay warm (66-70 degrees downstairs, for us) if our stove shows 450-500 degrees F. Any green wood runs the risk of creosote, but seasoned Pine is no worse than any other seasoned wood if the stove maintains a hot-enough fire. Our evidence? Close inspection of the flue during our annual chimney sweeping.

This winter, not bitingly cold but consistently below 50 degrees, has meant that we have burned more wood than in any winter when we've been using it as a primary source of heat. 

I want to increase our firewood storage for 2021-22 by 50%; that's not a problem, as we'll just build a few more wood boxes outdoors for the fuel to season; my new run-in has other uses and is not ideal for wood storage. For the first time, I'm cutting down healthy trees, too, but I'm picking crooked and leaning ones and retaining straight trees that could make good lumber while providing shelter for animals. Another consideration nowadays, with climate change causing more frequent and more severe storms, has been to limit blow-downs and chain reactions when one occurs. That's a subject meriting a future post, but I'm still learning.

In our woods we have many small beeches growing right against each other, and I plan to thin several that are 30-40' tall this Spring. They will season for 9 months. As we fell pines, I factor in needing a lot more of it.  We cut 20 small ones in early Spring 2020, to fell leaners and clear thickets as we expanded our chicken run and dog run back into the shade of the hardwoods. That pine seasoned well but burned fast; I'd estimate we had a full cord of small pine logs in November but nary a stick now.

These lessons about woodlot management came from an expert. I heard Joel Salatin talk at length about the subject when we visited him at Polyface Farm. Joel took us greenhorns around in his woods and talked about how many rural landowners squander a renewable source of energy, shade, and wildlife habitat by not managing second-growth forest properly.

His woods look idyllic, but they are working woods. If you own woodland, go visit Polyface and see what Joel is up to. He's a character but every working farmer I know is one. Comes with the fresh air and woodsmoke, I reckon.

This year, when the stove is cold for months on end, I will be on the lookout for books presenting Earth-friendly, sustainable methods on managing woodland.

The Hungry Stove

From now until April, the wood-stove will gobble up cord after cord of seasoned firewood. A cord measures 8' x 4' x 4' and we may well use FOUR of them this winter, if the cold endures as it did in 2013-14.  If I load it right, the stove will burn nearly all night and keeps the entire house warm. Last night was a cold one for November, and I came downstairs at about 3am and added logs. I was up anyway. When I woke again at 6, the fire was still burning a bit. Add more wood and the house responded.

All that burning brings to mind a few things, and that's not bad when one spends so much evening time by the hungry stove, sipping a good whisky and writing.  I think there is a time-suck called television, but ignoring it for the stove's show is one reason I get so many things done, including learning about what matters to me.

First, there is the notion of burning wood itself. I plan to do so until I am physically unable, but already I've outlasted a few contemporaries who find wood too much trouble. They want to come home flip a switch, and warm up by the simulacrum of a wood fire. That's their choice to make, but to me the entire point of a wood stove is to make you work for heat. The effort to split wood is great, even with a hydraulic-ram splitter such as the one I use for twisted or large logs. Increasingly I hand-split just to get some exercise, a trip to the gym being my idea of hell. Thus the old adage that wood warms you three times: splitting, toting, and burning. 

Gas logs do not add a thing to the garden, and between Dominic's market-garden and mine, we went through 100 gallons of wood ash to raise the PH of our acidic top soil. I will barely replenish that in a season of burning, but it is good to know that ash goes back into the cycle of planting and harvesting out here, not into the landfill. My gas-log acquaintances tend to go to gyms and gripe about the ash-removal part, as they do about raking (or for them, blowing) leaves. I take away leaves and actually bring them here to compost, to add leaf-mold to our garden.

The earth is as hungry like the stove, after all, as are our bellies. Now, after nearly two years of rural life, nearly every meal we fix includes a home-grown ingredient. Some meals are nearly all from the garden, a life-long goal of mine. All that ash and compost is doing the job well.

The biggest lesson of having a stove is spiritual. The second half of life should be a time of letting go, gently. Dylan Thomas was wrong: we should go gentle. So tending stove becomes a ritual of personal and even metaphysical import: I'm reminded of the Busk, a Native-American tradition that Thoreau discusses in Walden, after he encountered it in the travel narratives of William Bartram (a writer I wish we remembers more).  We refer to "busking" today as a way to sell things, but the old word was quite the opposite: it was an act of creative and cleansing destruction.  Tribes would burn old and broken possessions, worn-out furniture, and other items to make way for the new.

My stove is doing exactly that, by trading old wood and kindling (the latter from a hundred carpentry projects) for a Spring garden. The fire-pit outside burns other less seasoned and softer woods, but also outdated paperwork and such. It's a wonderful tradition we might revive in our consumerist present.

And thus, be a bit thankful about letting things go. Happy Thanksgiving and stay warm!

Sustainable, Chemical-Free Christmas Trees?

Rural landowners face a big dilemma when deciding to earn money from the land. First, there is scale: one must have enough land in production to earn one more than a pittance. I hope, with some pasture nearby, to eventually raise Christmas trees without any herbicides or pesticides. My plan would be to employ Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices, as we do in our garden, mow for weeds, and hand shear trees each year properly until we harvest them.

As I read up on these concepts, and talk to a few local vendors who might buy my trees in a decade, I look no further than our farm garden for some advice on how to manage some of this.

We loaned much of our garden this summer out for an ongoing experiment by a tenant gardener, Dominic, who runs delli Carpini Farm. Other than feeding bugs to our chickens and applying diatomaceous earth to some plants, Dom has not been invasive in his practices. He uses organic fertilizers for top dressing, hand weeds, works the soil with manure, limestone, and fireplace ash, and hand digs most of his beds. Only one bed, never broken before, got the plow and harrow treatment by me. We both dislike that, but my own belief is "plow or till once" to get the weeds gone, then work small plots by hand after. In our sauna of a climate, it is tough to do otherwise.

Right now, the experiment has also showed him and me that being sensitive to the market and finding a niche crop helps.  For next year, if the weather holds, he is thinking of more cantaloupes and fewer tomatoes. After all, in Central VA, everyone grows tomatoes. Local melons, while not exactly rare, are harder to find and his first sales showed that these easily sell out. I will add hot peppers to the mix. Very few growers here have certain varieties I know will sell out at the farmer's markets.

I am considering something similar for trees, but I will have to identify varieties popular around here and that grow well in our climate. I love Scot's Pine but Jean English's article from Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners shows how relentlessly the market determines things. Scots Pines, also a favorite of the author, did not sell because the needles are too prickly for most consumers. Then the question becomes, what trees thrive here and will survive enough shaping to give the iconic (and artificial) conical shape that modern consumers expect?

Our great-grandparents were happy with a "natural" tree, open branches and all. Perhaps in the future, in a new era of energy scarcity, we will be again. Yet I cannot grow that tree for a profit. So the research begins as I talk to local merchants and read more from those in the business.

Because if we have to spray poisons, the deal is just off.