# Self Sufficiency/Living off the Land or Off the Grid > General Homesteading >  What's your preferred firewood source?

## OMark

Just curious to get some ideas of what everyone likes to cut for fuel, consider both easy of processing and burning quality.

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## Rick

Here you go. 

http://www.wilderness-survival.net/f...light=firewood

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## alaskabushman

Everyone will probably have a different favorite wood since its very dependent on the trees that are locally available. Softwoods are rarely reccomended as firewood but that's all I have in my region. I burn a lot of Western hemlock and yellow cedar, but also a little Sitka spruce and red cedar makes great kindling.

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## kyratshooter

Growing up in a region of mixed hardwoods I have tried about all of them.

I like ash as an all around fuel for its ease of processing and the fact that it will catch and burn well with no aging necessary.

White oak is next on my list along with hickory, but hickory is difficult to split so you need to be able to pick and choose small stove sized logs.

Top wood for burning all night???  It has to be either osage or black locust.  You can melt a stove with that stuff if you are not careful.  It will have you sitting in your shorts with the doors open to cool the house down.

The worst wood is any kind of elm.  It is so full of water when green that it simply will not burn, then when it ages and dries out it goes up in smoke like burning paper.  I have been forced to quinch and unload the stove and replace half charred elm with good wood to get the house warm because the elm absolutely would not burn.

The only soft wood I have ever burned is our eastern red juniper, also known as red cedar.  It is an excellent campfire wood because it burns well as a multi-colored flame and smells great.  It is not a good stove wood in my opinion.

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## hunter63

Our "Place" cabin on my avatar.....burns wood as the main heat source...with electric back up.
The is about 6 acres of wood lot....mixed bag of trees.

Favorite is... Oak.....Have cut up and split several large oaks that were dead falls.....actually have a coupple more to try to get out of the ravine...but have slowed down on wood cutting.
My main fuel...aged a year or so......

Next is Elm.....I know many people don't care for it....but with about 100 plus trees that blighted and died...many falling in the fields and road...were cut and splits ok.
I saved out quite a few rounds.... 4 to 12" dia....make wonderful "overnighters"....still going after about 6 hours.

These were standing dead trees, killed off....or recent windfalls....

If the bark was off...the wood is still good...then starts to gets punky from the ground up...
If it still has bark in it...mostly bad and punky...going into berms and piles.

Never cut a live elm...so can't speak to that.

Next is black walnut....mostly just over hangs in the fields with just a few trees cut....haven't burned the bigger logs..are drying for projects.

Last...Box elder...a soft, gnarly, fast growing weed tree...
First year...real to hard to split green....and won't burn unless split very thin.
Second year will burn....with better wood with it..
Third year...toss as it is punky and light as a feather...no BTU's left.
Mostly don't waste time a fuel on it...cut down...pick up whole tree with the buck forks....dump in pile for rabbit-tat.

Love that tractor.
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Downed dead elm....saved the round for overnighters.

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## Fixit

With 30 acres of mixed hardwoods I am not fussy . While I like a mix of oaks and hickory . What I burn is whatever is dead ,damaged or blown down .

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## hunter63

> With 30 acres of mixed hardwoods I am not fussy . While I like a mix of oaks and hickory . What I burn is whatever is dead ,damaged or blown down .


Bingo.......

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## Solar Geek

Red oak. 35+ acres of red oaks; we can live for the rest of our lives with the dead falls.

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## Rick

Just don't be under one.  :triage:

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## hunter63

Doc is not real big on chainsawing, splitting, lifting and stacking....
Kinda got real last fall....

Sooooo.....Lately it has been "delivered wood"......
Call my guy....he calls his buddy....they bring over a large pick up load....(Not quite a face cord)..$100 bucks
Mixed oak and elm...cut to 16" fits better in the stove.....split, delivered and stacked...

I meet them at the saloon...I pay then.... then they buy a few rounds....

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## Rick

A few? That brings the price down to 12.95 delivered and a buzz. That's a pretty good deal.

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## hunter63

Same guy did my new windows, roof on the shed, built pole barn...and grandson does my weed wacking.....
Very good deal indeed.

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## crashdive123

Oak is my favorite.  There is enough tree work in the area where I can collect enough for my purposes.  If I had the room, I could have collected enough for a lifetime after Hurricane Matthew.

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## hunter63

Crash...any concern about termites and ants in those trees?
There was some talk about mulch from ground up trees, from down south after the hurricanes..  having termites mixed in with them.

Lately....due to the Green Ash Borer,.... just about every ash tree is dead, or dying...thousands of trees....on street parkways, yards. parks......everywhere.
These are big old trees....Really sad.

You can have all you want...as long as it isn't transported out of the area......
Ash burns well...bythch to split....

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## crashdive123

There is.  Storing your wood off the ground is a must here (I also treat the soil below the cinder blocks to be safe).  If it is lying on the ground it will quickly (by nature's standards) turn to dirt.

Currently there are a couple of species of termites that will nest in trees (only one in this area - Formosan) and even consume them to some extent.

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## randyt

In my area I prefer hard maple and white ash but generally burn white birch, spruce, oak, elm, trembling aspen, ironwood. For kindling wood I prefer squaw wood or split northern white cedar.

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## LowKey

Around here it's oak and some maple. White or Paper birch doesn't burn and gets punky the second year. 
The hickories are mostly gone.
The ash all died a few years ago. 
This year I think we're going to lose the white pines to rust and hemlocks to adelgid. Lots of standing dead. No good to burn.
So sad.

I get mine delivered, mostly deadfall.

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## randyt

Paper birch needs to be split, I have some that is several years old that hasn't turned punky.

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## LowKey

Most of the paper birch around here doesn't even make a decent sized log, let alone large enough to split. And they're infected with some kind of disease that makes them bend and not stand back up. Junk wood here.

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## edr730

Birch groves always catch some kind of disease and then they die in groups. I always have some birch mixed up in my firewood. It's  a fair wood to burn. The white isn't as hard as the yellow. It's nice to have around because the bark burns like an oily rag and is a handy fire starter. Mine is always big enough to split.

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## 1stimestar

Up here we have black spruce and birch.  The spruce is the hottest burning but they are small.  The birch is for long nights.
Wood is $250 a cord here.

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## alaskabushman

> Up here we have black spruce and birch.  The spruce is the hottest burning but they are small.  The birch is for long nights.
> Wood is $250 a cord here.


Split dry yellow cedar here is $200 a cord. Hemlock is going for around $150.

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## alaskabushman

I noticed that many of you cut your wood on your own property. In my area of Alaska, private property tends to be small. My lot is less than an acre. However, the lack of private lands is balanced by LOTS of public land, and the hundreds of miles of old logging roads means endless places to go hunting for firewood. 

I live in the Tongass National Forest, the Forest Service allows people to cut wood for personal use and sale. As long as the tree is dead (standing or otherwise) then it is legal to cut. For resale a permit is required, but for personal use it is free.  

I do cut up the trees on my property when some come down. I had to fall 7 trees in order to get a satellite connection so I could finally get internet. These trees will all be firewood. Probably more than enough to fill the 8 cord capacity of my woodshed.

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## hunter63

I mostly cut my own, or lately buy it....out at the cabin....
Gave away a lot of the elms the were dead standing....to a couple of neighbors....they were cutting and hauling away for themselves.

I only asked they pile up any brush they did cut...but mostly they took the whole trees.

One friend for 25 years, one of the first people we met at "The Place" was very sick, one winter, so couldn't work....I cut split and delivered, stacked, several loads.....to help out.

Interesting enough, his wife...also a good friend, our bartender, EMT, emergency room nurse and helped take care of our dogs while I was having my excitement last fall.

Good example or what goes around, come back around...

I still have a good pile behind the garage, for the garage wood stove....
Haven't used that stove lately......so that plie has been there awhile....so I need to use it before I lose it.


Right now in the city and county...you can pick up off the curb...or go to many parks...to pick up all the blighted ash trees cut wood you want.

Driving around in town.,..make you sick seeing all the dead trees everywhere...the ones on private property are the owner's responsibility.
Many of these are in older neighborhoods...with older people on fixed incomes....but need to deal with them so they don't fall on their houses.....Big problem.

Before the ash blight...parks would mark what trees they wanted cut...and you could put in for a permit.
That became a insurance issue so they quit that and have them cut.....now you just pick it up...with a permit.

Even the yard waste dump...on of my favorite "Lawn and Garden centers"...has a spot for people to drop off cut up trees, the big stuff....and anyone can pick u all they want.

So you can drop off yard waste, then fill back up with ground tree mulch, or compost...as well as firewood ...for free. 

I have a few birch on the hill behind the cabin....but they are not a lot in that area...much more in northern Wisconsin....one of our deer hunting areas.
Never really brought home much wood...but do collect the bark...and have vainly searched for chaga....for fire spark catcher. 

Nothing beats the wood heat for giving you that warm fuzzy feeling...literary.

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## backtobasics

We burn pine and some juniper because that's all your allowed to cut here. There is very little hard wood in the area and it's illegal to take it from the forest.

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## Oldnitehiker

A few years ago I brought home a few cords of oak from the nearby state forest here in PA. The price was $15 a cord. I hear it's gone up to $20. A permit is required. Only dead trees that don't have wildlife living in them can be taken, and the wood must be hand carried out to the road. Areas that are being marked for timber sale are off limits, and of course areas being logged are out. The price for commercial firewood harvest is higher, but state foresters will mark 10 cords in an area that can be brought out with a machine less than 30 HP at the commercial price.

When we get the house to a point that we can start heating with wood again, we'll probably start buying logs delivered. Last time I checked, a tri-axle log truck stacked tight and high went for $650. I think it's the way to go for an old guy like me.

Heat value of wood is proportional to weight assuming factors such as moisture content, stove efficiency, etc. are equal. So a cord or stove load of heavy wood will produce more heat than that of a light weight wood. 

I lean toward the oaks which are plentiful around here. Aside from it's weight it tends to split along the grain making for somewhat equal size from end to end. Some detractors would be smell and slow seasoning, though it dries faster when split. 

Aromatic woods include the hickories, apple, yellow birch, and maple to name a few. Hickory isn't too common around here. Apple is available from orchards, but being pruned for production, it tends to be crooked. Maple and yellow birch are common.

Not too crazy about willow, poplar, or aspen due to their low heat value, but for the right price they make fine chill chasers before and after winter.

Wood I don't like would be boundary trees due to hardware content, and street side trees because of hardware and large amounts of rot.

For pure entertainment drop a length of green gum on the splitter and watch it steam while it screams. There is nothing entertaining about splitting gum by hand with it's curly grain that doesn't want to let go.  


Oldnitehiker - Avatar coming

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## kyratshooter

Kid down the road, I say kid but he is 30 and has a 2 year old kid of his own, is taking out the big ash from the yard next door.  By big I mean about 100 years old, over 3' in diameter and killed by Emerald Ash Boers last year, but still solid.  

The neighbors were fussing because it was going to cost them $500 to get it removed before it fell on something and did major damage.  I told them to call down the road and our neighbor would remove it for the wood.

He helped me take down two big ones two years back and I lost track of the number of truckloads he took home.  He was driving a full sized Dodge and we filled it 5 or 6 time up to the top of the cab.  He still as half of it left, and well aged.

Now he has about 10 more truckloads in hand and will be good for another two years, the neighbors are thrilled they saved $500 and everyone is happy.

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## hunter63

Send him over....
Got a couple of box elders that are overhanging the sheds.....look like PITA to get down without hitting something....by myself.

LOL...
Lots of dead ash......can't really make any money selling wood...too much a round....and cutting can be a legal bonding problem.
Ash burns pretty well.

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## Alan R McDaniel Jr

Down here the choices are generally Live Oak or Mesquite and to a lesser extent, pecan.  There are some people who burn wood for heat here, but not very many.  I don't think I made a single fire in the fireplace last winter.  Most of it is use to Bar-B-Que.  #1 son runs a tree trimming/removal business and he sells to the area Bar-b-que joints. The wood is secondary to the removal/trimming.  He gets $200/cord for green or dead.  No hemming or hawing, no haggling about the price. He removes the tree, usually cuts up the smaller branches on the trailer he's using to haul it off and the cuts and splits the big stuff at his yard.  Next stop is the B-b-que place to unload.  There's one fellow about 8 miles from him that he made a helluva deal to.  $100/cord for anything green or dead but he had to take it all, any time he had it.  The guy complained about it.  So, he told him, "No problem, I'll take it another 8 miles to the next place they'll give me $200 no questions asked.  

He does Okay.  Works his butt off all day every day and makes a living.

All I have to do is mention that I need Bar-b-que wood and he'll drop off a tub of the chips and small pieces form the splitting.

Alan

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## Antonyraison

Preferred wood is what ever is dry

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## slide95

IF no trees went down that year... yeah, firewood is bought.

We like seasoned oak, apple and cherry.

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## slide95

My father gets really good Oak and I stole some to use in my fireplace since the wood I purchased was green after being told it was seasoned  

Next season I am getting it from my father's delivery person even if I have to have it dropped at his house and pick it up myself. I searched CL, and drove around town and found nothing that seemed to fit the budget I was looking for and had little guarantee of the quality. I actually stopped at the place I bought my wood from to complain but still have not heard back from the message I left for the gentleman before Christmas. If I don't hear back by New Year's, he has lost a customer for many other things (shrubs, mulch, stone, etc.)

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## Rick

Well I'll be. I had no idea that New Year's came so late in Algeria. Here it is June and New Year's was month's ago. I guess in Algeria life moves slower and New Years just hasn't made it there yet. In that case, let me be the first to wish you a Happy New Year.

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