This is good news for many who are involved in growing trees and marketing firewood. It is also promising for anyone manufacturing and marketing the implements needed to utilize the wood after it is processed into a manageable state for heating or cooking.
I have been dealing with wood in one form or another all of my life. When I was growing up in the thirties my mother cooked on a combination wood and coal fired kitchen range. It had a hot water reservoir that supplemented the ever present teakettle on the back burner for hot water. It had an oven and warming oven where I would find my meal waiting if as it would often happen that I was late for a meal. It was also a place where mother would put the bread dough to rise.
In the winter coal was the principle cooking fuel and it served to heat the kitchen as well. It had to be banked at night and reenergized every morning to cook breakfast on. In the spring summer and early fall wood replaced the coal for cooking, canning and heating water. The back porch housed a kerosene fueled stove that was used for cooking when the weather was excessively hot. A round oak coal stove in the living room was the primary heat source. It like the kitchen stove had to be tended constantly when you were awake to maintain heat.
It was a labor intensive system as was everything connected to life in the thirties and before. I sometimes reflect on life in those days and wonder aloud how we ever adjusted to life before television, computers and all of the countless other entertainment outlets. It suddenly hit me as I was putting together this epistle, no one would have had time to utilize them if they were available.
Wood may be a cheaper alternative than oil, natural gas and electricity but it is not nearly as clean, convenient or carefree. This point has been brought home to me at various stages throughout my life on a personal level and from comments from others.
The first energy crisis I can remember was brought on in the seventies during the Carter administration. The demand for firewood increased and I took advantage of it by selling standing firewood sales for private landowners. Some of the trees I sold twice and three times. The buyers would tire of the work connected with processing the wood and abandon the task before harvesting all of the trees. I would remark them and include them in another sale. A common remark was, “If the price of oil ever goes down I am done with burning wood.”
Wood heat has never completely gone out of vogue with many people. It does have significant advantages over the other alternatives. Technological advances in units wood is burned in have been made. One advancement is the remote outside burning facilities that removes the danger of house fires and keeps the litter from bark and ashes out of the house. At the present it is definitely cheaper than any other fuel for heat.
Old friend and logger, Joe Kriwox, who had ready access to unlimited amounts of high quality wood for fuel had a state of the art outside facility that housed the wood and burner under one roof. I was admiring it and asked Joe how he liked it. His answer said it all. It was, “I still have to cut the wood and put it in the furnace everyday.” It was ideal for wood heat but not as carefree as the other three alternative fuels.
Our principal source of heat is still wood. We have a backup propane fired furnace as well. The wood is burned in a steel enclosed fireplace insert on a raised hearth and a variable speed blower to circulate the heat. It has a door with fireproof glass that allows you to view the flames. The previous owner of the home remarked that the flames were a lot of company. Over time I have come to learn what she meant. The constantly weaving varicolored flames leave you with the sensation that one is entertaining visitors.
We are very fortunate here in the northeast to have unlimited supplies of excellent high quality hardwood. The various species have varying degrees of worth as fuel. The following ode describes them far better than I can.
Birchwood logs are bright and clear
If the logs are kept a year.
Chestnut’s only good they say,
If for long it’s laid away.
Birch and fir logs burn too fast,
Blaze up fast and do not last.
Elmwood burns like a churchyard mold;
Even the very flames are cold.
Poplar gives a bitter smoke,
Fills your eyes and makes you choke.
Apple wood will scent your room
With an incense like perfume.
Oak and maple, if dry and old,
Keep away the winters cold.
But ash wood wet and ash wood dry,
A king shall warm his slippers by.
—Author unknown