Our family moved to South Central Texas a couple of years ago. Our house is surrounded by lots of beautiful (and lots of scraggly) live oak trees and countless Texas Cedars (Ashe Junipers). The latter are considered a native invasive in the area. We’ve been slowly clearing and pruning for the health of the land and accumulating some firewood in the process.
Most of the wood we have is pretty small, so we haven’t done a lot of splitting. Some of the wood is stacked in racks in a covered barn with good air flow. Other wood is still outside where it can get wet, but it also gets lots of Texas sun.
Today while my husband and I were doing some work on a garden fence, he needed to cut a cedar stump lower. He had felled the live cedar in March but left the stump about four feet high. He cut off two rounds today, and we decided to split one to see what the moisture was inside. 16 - 18 percent on the fresh split face (and no, the wood was not cold down here in Texas today).
“Nice,” we said to ourselves, “but it’s cedar. Let’s try that unsplit oak branch over there.” We had cut it from a tree and to stove length in the spring. It was only about five inches around but was a bear to split today. There was a curve with a knot, so we didn’t get the whole thing in half. We did get off a good chunk before the knot, enough to expose some fresh interior wood. We tested with the meter: 18 percent. I was surprised but quite pleased. Now I won’t worry quite so much about all those branch pieces that are too small and twisty to split. Since that’s a huge portion of our wood, it’s nice to know it’s seasoning just fine in our hot, dry climate.
Most of the wood we have is pretty small, so we haven’t done a lot of splitting. Some of the wood is stacked in racks in a covered barn with good air flow. Other wood is still outside where it can get wet, but it also gets lots of Texas sun.
Today while my husband and I were doing some work on a garden fence, he needed to cut a cedar stump lower. He had felled the live cedar in March but left the stump about four feet high. He cut off two rounds today, and we decided to split one to see what the moisture was inside. 16 - 18 percent on the fresh split face (and no, the wood was not cold down here in Texas today).
“Nice,” we said to ourselves, “but it’s cedar. Let’s try that unsplit oak branch over there.” We had cut it from a tree and to stove length in the spring. It was only about five inches around but was a bear to split today. There was a curve with a knot, so we didn’t get the whole thing in half. We did get off a good chunk before the knot, enough to expose some fresh interior wood. We tested with the meter: 18 percent. I was surprised but quite pleased. Now I won’t worry quite so much about all those branch pieces that are too small and twisty to split. Since that’s a huge portion of our wood, it’s nice to know it’s seasoning just fine in our hot, dry climate.
