Column: Sugar Maple Evening!

The wood piles shrinking had slowed for a few days, when the weather hit 20 degrees. But the cold is back, and the wood burner is burning. I have a Fire Horse model woodstove I bought nearly 50 years ago. It was made in Tonawanda, 15 miles north of the Bethlehem and Republic Steel Mills in Lackawanna N.Y. (Many of the miners from our area went to the Republic Steel Mill when the mines were closing here.) The stove has needed a few repairs over the years, but luckily, I know welders who did an excellent job getting it back to brand-new condition. We did a good trade, a heaping trailer load of split hemlock garage heating firewood for a welding job! Thanks Guys! When you burn wood, there is an art to it. Most firewood suppliers give you a mix of quality hardwoods (aspen is not quality, sugar maple, oak, and beech are). As wood-burning professionals, you must know which chunk of wood is needed for the various temperatures that occur during the 24-hour day, and the 7-day week. At 20 degrees outside and the sun shining with little wind, even an old farmhouse will be comfortable with aspen or popple during the day, yea you may need to load it every hour or two, but it will supply some heat. Woodlot owners usually have some aspen they can harvest for day heat. At night, however, you must consider a higher BTU species of wood. White ash will work and give sufficient heat and a nice bed of coals to get a morning fire cooking. When the temperatures drop to zero and below, a higher quality BTU species of wood is called for. The BTU is a unit of heat that is part of the United States customary units. One BTU is defined as the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit. When it comes to wood heating, the BTU rating of wood gives you an indication of how much heat the wood can produce when burned. (Homestead Journal Magazine) The higher the BTU rating the more heat will be given off. When I trim my apple trees, I save the 3 or 4-inch and larger branches to use for firewood on cold days. Apple has a rating of 27 BTU's, Nice warm heat! I use larger pieces during the night. The butt pieces are saved for the below 0 nights. I used 4 nice large ones for the freezing weather we had during Super Bowl weekend. I don't have much apple wood, so on cold nights my go-to wood is Sugar maple. A large sugar maple blew down a few years ago, so I chopped it and diced it up into usable pieces and stored it in the woodshed to be brought out in extremely critical weather times. This winter I broke into the stash! The old shack is warm when I load the stove on sugar maple evenings. If you are new to heating with firewood, here is a listing of woods and their BTU values. WOOD BTU CHART Wood Type BTU Rating (Million BTUs per Cord) Hickory 27.7 Oak (Red) 24.6 Oak (White) 26.4 Maple (Sugar) 24 Beech 27.5 Birch (Yellow) 22 Ash 20 Cherry 20.4 Elm 20 Walnut 22 Locust (Black) 27.9 Apple 27 Maple (Red) 19.5 Pine (White) 15.9 Spruce 15.5 Cedar 13 Fir 14 Poplar 13.4 Willow 13.5 Aspen 18.2 Heating is expensive, whether it's oil, propane, or wood. Turning a dial and getting instant heat is good when the costs are low. Wood is a lot of work and not cheap. I use both, in fall and late spring I turn the dial on the oil furnace, but in between times, it's good old organic, renewable wood. Forest management and logging are simply weeding the garden when it's done right. As the French loggers say, La Vie Dubois! (Life in the woods!) — Rich Redman is a Moriah, New York-based outdoors writer. His column runs monthly. He can be reached at richredmanrangeric@gmail.com

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Column: Sugar Maple Evening!

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