One thing I like about heating with wood at the farm is that I can fill the “oil” tank in half and hour out the back. My goal is to only burn dead wood. With this warm spell we haven’t had the wood stove going for a few days, but tonight that has to change. I went out this morning and brought back this load of dead elm (darn that Dutch Elm disease) and ash (ditto, Emerald Ash Borer I guess).

This morning's load of firewood. Dead Elm, Ash & Poplar

My friend Fred Dawson came over yesterday and we cut a bunch more dead elm trees for firewood. This is most of it.

Dead Elm Firewood

Susan is very happy now that we have a wood store again … she likes to be warm!

Why we do this

Before:

Dead Elm Tree

After:

Elm After

Stump:

Elm Stump

The result:

A warm glow

One of the real joys of living on the farm is being self sufficient for our winter heating. I’m way behind in being ready for winter, but today in less than an hour I filled the Treker twice with wood from dead trees around the old orchard.

Second quick load of firewood

This will keep us warm and toasty until the weekend. With the dry(er) forecast for the next few days I’ll let things dry out a bit more before I cut more. This is some of the wood I pulled out of the swamp late last winter, all dead ash trees flooded out by beavers in the 70’s.

Dead ash trees skidded out over the ice from the beaver swamp