What Is In Your Stove Right Now?

CentralVAWoodHeat said:

You must be having some weird splitting experiences between this and other posts you've done. Poplar is super easy to split. I would tie it nearly with the oaks. The difference is, oaks tend to be a bit more knotty than Tulip Poplar. In addition, it is so light that moving and stacking it are significantly easier. For me, it's so easy to fell and process and puts so little wear on me and my tools, that the quicker burn times are a fine trade off.

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I'm very lucky in that I have lots of second-growth trees around me with long, straight, almost knot-free stretches of trunk. I've been splitting a lot of red oak, maple, tulip poplar, and hickory this winter and I'd rank their ease of splitting (for similarly-sized rounds) in that order with oak being the easiest. For whatever reason I just haven't had that much success with poplar for pretty much the whole 20 years I've lived here. But I completely agree that it's easier to move & stack, I definitely see your point about that.

Loaded the insert with red oak that I cut down this weekend. It was barkless and almost limbless. Top half of the trunk measured 18% on the meter. Bottom half was 20-24% and will be good next year.

It's not too cold...only supposed to bottom out in the 20s, so I grabbed four nice splits to keep the furnace from kicking on overnight. They appeared to be one walnut, one ash, and two honey locust.

Some ash and I believe maple. I did a full maple load last night and it was slow to go, but once it was involved, holy crap! Air all the way off and 550 stovetop for 2 hours. Woke up this morning and the wife had throw. On a stick to get it going for me.

Some silver maple and red oak

Got some hard maple and white ash.

Oak, Ash, Elm and Box Elder. Some kindling of the same with some Pine and Maple kindling as well.

It's not real cold, wind chill about 20 degrees, but The wind is ripping across the chimney top at about 30 mph so I tossed in some oak with a few pieces of mulberry all on top of some mulberry coals.

I just loaded with a split of ash, mulberry, and two that I think might be maple.

Black walnut and sugar maple. And a grEn brick from rural king because I started a cold stove.

Got the weekend fire started with some 4 x 4 cedar scraps I found while cleaning up around the table saw. Silver maple splits went in on top of that followed by my good friend Mr. Ash. Now to sip something hoppy while I watch the secondaries.

Today will be ash, walnut, and sugar maple. I have about 1/3 of a cord in my garage and I hope to not move anymore wood, but I don't want to restack this either. Delicate balancing act, as my burning normally ends in March but can go into April.

Oak, oak, and more oak.

Was up in the mid-50's the last few days, so I was only running one stove. Both get fired up tonight, going down to 23F.

March has not been good to me so far!!
Hard maple and ash 24/7 for the past three days. -21*C for tonight apparently. Calling for a significant mild weather starting Sunday! Lots of white stuff on the ground. Crews are starting to break up ice on local rivers....sign of spring for sure!

Robins and cardinals are back and signing away in -12*C!

I just packed the stove with all mulberry, and it's flaming up. It's popping like crazy.

Cleaned the chimney the other day and have been burning maple & oak, looks like the season might be coming to an end soon, next week mid 60's, only burnt about 3 cords this year, that fine with me.

Just ashes

It's funny yesterday was 70 plus, but by nine o'clock last night it was already in the fifties. It's 34 right now with the stove cruising at about 350 to 400 with a load of mulberry and one piece of locust. Supposed to be warmer next week but still chilly enough to have small fires.

The stove has been running steady since last Tue. The temperature has been hovering around mid 30s
Three pieces of uglies (silver maple) every 8-9 hrs.

3 big pieces of oak, their drying out for next year[emoji1][emoji1][emoji1] the chimney has been swept the fireplace cleaned, Spring is upon us here.