I love all of the different kinds of wood.

[panader0]

I was just splitting some old cedar fence wood for kindling and am just
amazed by the shiny grain. When I pick wood for kindling, I always look for
straight grain to make it easier to split into nice sticks to start my mesquite,
oak, pecan and pine. Recently I helped make some cabinets out of maple, a very
hard wood. Lots of scraps leftover. And some redwood.
Tons of mesquite on my land, I could cut every year and the new growth would
replenish my supply. The pecan comes from nearby orchards that trim every year.
Oak from the mountains. I also have a good stash of eucalyptus, a wood with
a winding grain that makes it very hard to split.
But sitting on my stump and splitting with axe and sledge is contemplative and
actually a bit of a work out. I refuse to let any piece get the best of me.

[handmade34]

1. your post

soothes my soul...

my senses are calmed and revived when I am in my woods... I loved to split wood when I had a wood stove... although here in Northern Vermont the wood was mostly maple

[panader0]

3. Southern Arizona here, but at 4650 feet with snow covered mountains

nearby, it gets pretty cold sometimes. The other morning it was 15 degrees.
28 this morning, a heat wave. As an old hippie, I have used wood for heat
for my adult life. Northern Vermont must be a chilly place.
(I have a small electric heater in the bathroom.)

[handmade34]

7. forecast has -18 for tomorrow night

that's only 46 degrees colder than you you know, it's all relative... my daughter is in Cave Creek, AZ right now and work took me to Arizona a number of times (mostly Tucson and Phoenix area)... never got to see a Javelina though

I miss burning wood but my partner says no and those are the sacrifices we make

[panader0]

11. I have so many javelina here it's crazy.

My 40 acres is up against BLM land and the little peccaries come here to
drink water I leave out for the birds. When I go outside early in the dark AM
to get wood I am cautious about them. They seem to love my place.

[Baitball Blogger]

2. Don't tell anyone, but I hugged my first birch a month ago.

Well, not hugged, but definitely laid my hand on it for the purpose of letting it know I appreciated its existence on this planet. I'm sure I've seen them before on my trips oop north. But this was the first time that I really, really saw one up close and it was a visceral reaction. It was standing in the snow next to my car in the parking lot and I just had to say hello.

[panader0]

4. Oh, a tree hugger eh?

[Baitball Blogger]

5. Mea culpa.

[panader0]

6. Me too.

I remember standing next to the General Sherman tree in the Sequoia National
Forest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Sherman_(tree)

[eppur_se_muova]

8. May the grain be with you ...

as St. Roy would say.

[lastlib]

9. I have some lovely elm wood you can have!

Of all the woods I've ever tried to split, I despised elm the most. All you can do is lop off slabs of it. But, dry, it puts out a lot of heat, although it takes a lot of heat to get it to burn, and it makes a lot of ash. If it's the least bit green, the smoke is horribly bad, but in a stove, you can deal with it; open fire, not so much.

Still, bottom line--I despise elm.

[panader0]

10. I check every round of wood before I split it,

looking to avoid knots or to follow the natural cracks that develop when
it dries. I have never tried elm. Not much of it around here. When I was
young and lived on the Deschutes River in Oregon on the Warm Springs
Reservation, my landlord was an old Indian guy who seemed to like me.
The house we rented from him had three wood stoves, so he came by in his
big new pickup and made me drive us way up into the trees on the Rez.
He would look at several trees before deciding which one to cut. It had to be
grey (dead) with straight grain. Then he handed me an antique chain saw
and said, "Okay woodsman, let's see what you got." The trees were Doug Fir
and three feet in diameter. Then he showed me how to best split the rounds.
Actually, he just liked driving through the woods. Hiram Smith, RIP.

[Kali]

12. we just use dead wood, mostly mesquite, catclaw, or oak

drag dead stumps home and smash with a sledge hammer

but a couple years ago I bought a ventless gas heater for the living room, so haven't been using the fireplace much. it actually warms half the house. we have a tap off a 16 inch El Paso line.

[gratuitous]

13. I had a professor in college

Doctorate in Math, which is pretty hard to get, who once observed in class that "Next to chopping wood and making love, mathematics is the best way to waste time."