Am I accidentally starting a firewood business?
Need firewood? Have I got a deal for you...
When my wife and I moved into this house, we were delighted to learn that among the things included were several cords1 of seasoned hardwood firewood.
“Wow,” we thought, “how lucky are we?” My wife loves fires, we were putting in a new wood stove, and here we have all this firewood ready to go.
And yes, it’s been great, but you know what would be even better? A little less firewood. That’s because we are accumulating firewood far faster than we can use it. So much so that it’s actually becoming a problem.
Between trees I’ve cut down, fallen branches, and trees uprooted by storms, we are constantly gathering up more and more wood.
As a result, we keep having to find places to stack more and more wood. We’re basically building bulwarks against the coming zombie apocalypse.
We have so much firewood stacked up that a bear used one pile as a springboard to leap over an electric fence and into our chicken and duck enclosure. Fair to say, our situation is not ideal.
To get things under control, I built three large firewood racks, each holding a little over half a cord. Along with the racks I’d previously built, I figured I finally had enough storage.
Construction was relatively quick and easy with some pre-cast concrete footers, 4x4s, 2x6s and 1x4s. I figured these three stands would take most of the excess wood, opening up space and beautifying the property.
And they probably would have been enough had a storm not dropped two 100-foot oak trees across our driveway, destroying one of our gates and generally making a mess of the place. So, with chainsaw in hand, I cut them into segments and, using a borrowed splitter2, turned out heaps more of nice oak firewood.
Do you know how much firewood is in a 100-foot oak tree? According to my calculations, it is a literal shit ton. Or, according to AI, between two to four cords. That’s not even including all the branches that will need to get chipped.
I basically have a used car lot of 1969 VW Beetles.3
It’s important to keep firewood off the ground so that it doesn’t rot. You want air to circulate around it, helping to dry and season it. The problem was, my firewood stands were already full.
So, I bought some landscape timbers and started making simple pallets out of them. I have four so far and that will hold another cord or so — certainly not enough.
I think I’ll soon find myself with at least 6 cords of firewood and I’m quite certain the next storm will be delivering me more. I suppose I could let more of the wood just rot in the brush. But, that’s kind of ugly and it sure seems wasteful.
So, if you need firewood, let’s talk. I know a guy.
As you no doubt know, a cord is 128 cubic feet, about the same as a 1969 VW Beetle. If you see a stack of firewood that is 8 feet by 4 feet by 4 feet — that’s a cord. It’s also a lot of firewood.
Thank you, Margrete!
This only makes sense if you had read the first footnote.
OAK, you could smoke a lot of meat with that… so you have reserves for the zombie apocalypse 😁
Also, use some of the fallen trees to make more firewood stands.
Yes, vital to keep the stacks out of ground contact, but also important to keep them covered— Else in a few years you’ll have mouldering stacks of rotting logs, which is far more depressing than too many stacks of good firewood.
Plastic sheeting stapled to the topmost logs, just enough to shed direct rainfall, is fine. We staple through scraps of birchbark to keep the plastic from shredding off the staples, but little squares cut from plastic milk cartons also works.