Twice burned firewood

[kwheat]

I envy all you easterners that have so many hardwoods to choose from. Here in northern Arizona, we were permitted by the Forest Service to harvest firewood from the Rodeo-Chedeski fire that burned almost half-million acres. The best wood in our area is shaggy bark cedar and alligator juniper. You find a good area where the fire just singed the outside of the trees, and the bark just falls off with excellent seasoned wood inside. There is also lots of Ponderosa pine, but it is starting to rot and is not the best even under normal circumstances. The cedar and juniper are really pretty good firewoods, lots of snap, crackle and pop but with a pleasing aroma. You kind of look like a coal miner after cutting, splitting and stacking a load of it! It was devastating to the area, but harvesting the wood, I guess, is making the best of bad situation.

 

[Corie]

I know exactly what you mean about looking like a coal miner.


A controlled burn got out of control 5 or 6 years ago in the area that my I hunt. Everytime you leave the woods you end up with a black line of soot up your back and usually on your face!

 

[snowfreak]

Can you drive in and load up right where the fire was or do you have to skid the wood out? Wonder how long they will let you harvest the wood? Have you got any pictures you can share with us? They had a story on the weather channel (storm stories) where these guys in Colorado got trapped in their cabin by a bad storm. It was a microburst system and leveled thousands of trees, they survived and were able to get out after days of cutting with chain saws on both ends. However in the following years some sort of pine beetle infested the area and turned the forest into a dry timberbox. I was hoping for some sort of follow up to the story because I'm sure that area was involved in the wild fires out west.

 

[JAred]

Beetle kill is fast becoming a serious problem here in Colorado. Lots of cutting permits are being handed out by the forest service to curtail the development of large standing beetle kill areas. If anyone has ever taken a match to a brownChristmas tree you can realize what in enormous blaze one could have if a whole mountain side went up.... The only cutting areas I've been to in my short career as a wood burner have been in sustainably harvested firewood and Christmas tree areas Where they rotate sections to cut firewood over the years. They go thru and mark trees they don't want cut and only let you take trees that are under 7 inches you can usually drive into the stand and load right there. It's good fire wood because you only end up splitting half of it cause the rest is small enough. Usually I don't even need to cut many trees down because people cut a bunch down and don't take the bottoms or the very tops so they get nice 8' logs. The permit only costs 20 bucks for a cord. and is managed quite well so you don't feel bad about hurting the forest.