Wood, by American Yeoman

Energy is a critical part of preparedness. Whether that’s stored food-energy for our bodies, fuels like gasoline that moves our vehicles, or firewood that heats our homes or cooks that food, energy is an important resource. Firewood should be a part of the preparedness energy picture. Wood for fuel has many important qualities- its’ reliable, abundant, cheap and renewable, stores for a reasonably long time and is not dependent on a long supply chain you can’t influence. If you live someplace where you can heat and cook with wood, you should have that as an option.

You can, of course, buy wood to burn. There are many people who make a living selling firewood. For the independent homesteader however, being able to produce our own should be the goal. Wood for heating and cooking comes in several forms. There is what I call “industrial wood”—pallets, building material waste etc…and then there is timber- trees. We’ll talk about trees first.

First, we need trees we can cut down. Every homestead and farm where I grew up had a woodlot – a piece of ground, usually hilly or swampy or otherwise not the best farm land where the family could cut wood to heat and cook with. If you have a homestead, keeping a healthy woodlot should be part of your management strategy. If you have only limited land or live in an area with fewer trees, you will have to get more creative here.

Where I live now, we have few trees and my homestead is not large. However, the city runs a wood chipping site where people can bring their no longer wanted yard trees or storm debris. After every big snow or ice storm there are trailer loads of large limbs that show up. The city eventually grinds all this up into chips used in the city parks. The sites are open to the public though and a pickup and a chainsaw will get you all the wood you can use in a few afternoons. Just an example of an option for even those with little land and few trees.

Industrial wood can be found many places. Home improvement stores throw out scraps of wood they have cut down for customers along with wood used to separate lumber-shipping materials. Anyplace there is construction there will be lumber scraps. Careful here – theft from a construction site is often a felony, ASK. Don’t burn plywood or similar wood products- the glues used to hold it together can give off  fumes when burned, which is the same with treated lumber. Shipping pallets can often be had for the hauling away. Some pallets are treated with fungicides and insecticides – not the kind of stuff you want to burn in your stove.

Equipment-wise, you don’t need much. However, some things are pretty tough to do without. At the chipping sites there are plenty of people who show up and scrounge up whatever pre-cut chunks they can put in their vehicles that will fit in their stoves or fireplaces. There are a few folks that show up with axes and chop a bit here and there. A chainsaw though makes short work of as much wood as you can haul. A hydraulic wood splitter puts you at the top of the heap! There are often huge pieces of tree trunks that there is almost no competition for and a splitter gives you a real advantage there.

With regards to wood burning, many homes have fireplaces. They are not a great option for heating with wood and are designed more in most cases for ambience than practical heating and cooking. Better than nothing. They are improved in most cases with an insert which is more efficient. Next step up would be a wood stove. A good stove is fairly efficient and not only provides heat for your space but can be used to cook on. Another option is the wood furnace, very efficient but relying on a blower to circulate heat through the home’s duct work. Lastly, there is the outside wood boiler unit which offers many benefits including hot water. Costs range from nothing if you already have one of these options to as much as $10-15k for a new wood boiler system. The economics of wood heat of course varies on how much of what type of fuel you would otherwise use to heat your home. But, one thing that is always in woods favor is that if you have wood and a means to burn it, you can heat your space and a meal no matter what is going on in the rest of the world. That has value.

That’s an overview of some of the issues involved with using wood as a fuel. We’ll talk more about specifics – cutting with chainsaws, burning options, species of wood, seasoning, safety concerns and other issues in coming installments.

 

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About the Author: Patriotman

Patriotman currently ekes out a survivalist lifestyle in a suburban northeastern state as best as he can. He has varied experience in political science, public policy, biological sciences, and higher education. Proudly Catholic and an Eagle Scout, he has no military experience and thus offers a relatable perspective for the average suburban prepper who is preparing for troubled times on the horizon with less than ideal teams and in less than ideal locations. Brushbeater Store Page: http://bit.ly/BrushbeaterStore

12 Comments

  1. Anonymous November 28, 2020 at 09:12

    5

  2. HP November 28, 2020 at 09:46

    My primary heat source has been wood for close to a decade. I lined, insulated, and installed woodstoves in both chimneys in my house. An insulated flue makes a huge difference in both efficiency of fuel used and heat loss. My area has many standing dead ash trees which are an excellent fuel source. My Dad called it vertical firewood storage. I prefer to do my harvesting during the winter months. I do, however as a supplement, purchase loads of precut slabwood from a local mill. $230 for 3 chords delivered is well worth the time savings to me.

    Having a willing spouse and homeschooled children certainly helps with the wood chores when I’m away at work. The old saying that firewood wood heats you twice- when you cut/stack it and when you burn it- is certainly true.

    As an aside, I recommend A Reverence for Wood by Eric Sloane. This and several of his other books are great references to early American lifestyle.

  3. Wallace the Reptilian Overlord November 28, 2020 at 11:21

    Not many trees grow around here, except for the pecan groves, which are irrigated. A lot of the grove owners let people come and haul off the limbs they cut during pruning, similar idea to the thing about city facilities, except when we did it these guys charged us about $20 for as much wood as we could haul off in a day. The friend I helped with that heats his house for ~$20 a year, give or take gas and the occasional chainsaw blade expenses. Not a bad deal if you’re set up for it.

  4. James November 28, 2020 at 12:11

    Folks remember to keep your IFAK nearby when cutting wood,actually all jobs that could get ugly using power equiptment ect.

    I love me Lopi wood stove!

    • wwes November 28, 2020 at 23:17

      Definitely a good piece of advice, you don’t even have to be using a chainsaw for it to hurt you. I put one of my Stihls down one day to roll log over, tripped, and fell with my hand going across the chain. It tore my palm up really good, and if not for some first aid it would have been a dangerous wound. Saws can make some horrendous wounds on legs too, especially when you start running powerful professional saws.

  5. wwes November 28, 2020 at 23:19

    If you’ll let friends and coworkers know you burn wood, at least here in NC, usually you’ll have more people offering you good hardwood, just for cutting it and hauling it away, than what you want. People like to give pine away too, and if you heat with an outdoor wood boiler, pine is perfectly fine to use.

    • NC Scout November 29, 2020 at 08:44

      This is a fact. I have people willing to give me all of their deadfall and tree trimmings every fall. And when there’s a hurricane, it’s literally fuel for free.

      Pine can be burned in the house, you just have to season it for a *long* time. Out west Aspen is pretty popular. The burn time is faster and I season yellow and white Pine for at least four years before I’d burn it indoors.

      • wwes November 29, 2020 at 15:01

        I burn some pine here and there in the woodstove inside, usually I mix a piece or two of pine in with a stoveload of hardwood and it burns clean.
        Old locust fence rails and posts burn great too, and they burn HOT. Usually when the split rail fences get repaired there will be a load or two of broken posts and rails.

  6. HighCountry November 28, 2020 at 23:52

    Although we have a propane heater, it has been turned off for over a decade. We heat exclusively with wood. Two years ago I bought a Stihl MS261C chainsaw to add to my collection. That was a game changer for me. There is no choke or three screws to adjust to get the fuel mixture right. The saw has a computer chip in it that adjusts for altitude, temperature, fuel mixture and air filter condition. You just pull the starter rope a few times for a cold start and it runs perfectly regardless of conditions. The computer chip makes adjustments 33 times a second. I really love this saw.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJIBdSURoAQ

    About 15 years ago I bought a electric log splitter from RamSplitter. Since it runs on 110 volts AC, and we are off the grid on solar power, I tell my friends that we have a solar log splitter. We live on the edge of the Great Basin at 6,300 feet. There are plenty of dead Pinyon trees around. Pinyon seldom has any straight grain because Pinyon has twisted wood and knots everywhere. Pinyon Pine has about the same amount of BTU’s as Oak. The electric log splitter really works well. Sometimes I have to reposition a piece of wood, but the splitter will eventually get through it. It is nice not having to deal with gasoline fumes and wearing ear protection while splitting wood.

    We use a Bakers Choice Cook Stove to heat our small well insulated house. I think that having several years of split, dry and stacked firewood is like money in the bank. There are no moving parts to a wood stove so no matter what happens, the house stays warm.

    Of course we have a propane stove/oven, dishwasher, microwave, washer and dryer like any other house. There is something about wood head that feels really good.

  7. mike November 29, 2020 at 18:44

    Some thoughts: Scavenging wood can be an ongoing addendum to your regular routine if you keep a portable saw in the pickup. I often spot nice quantities of fresh firewood discarded by the roadside in rural areas by utility companies. If it is not on occupied or posted land and is close to the margin of the roadway, then it gets cut into 4′ logs and tossed into the truck bed. I often find this type of bonanza when doing errands or driving to hunt or fish. only cut my own trees when they are dead, are knocked over by weather, or are otherwise in my way.

    The traditional fireplace may be the low end of the home heating options, but it is much better than nothing. Fireside hearth cooking can be done and many of the colonial era cooking utensils like bean pots, dutch ovens, and spiders featured legs for cooking over a camp fire or open hearth fire at home. The technique really involves cooking over the hot coals instead of the flames and is a good skill to have for the soldier and the outdoorsman. While I would not consider all of this stuff portable or any of it particularly tactical, much of it can be carried away from the home and used in the field if required. These old time cooking vessels are available today as they are popular with historic re-enactors and several supply outfitters cater to this market. One of them, “Townsends” features short videos on using this cookware while preparing a wide range of table fare. Anyone interested can find them on that well known video streaming site.

    • NC Scout November 29, 2020 at 18:59

      ‘Scavenging wood can be an ongoing addendum to your regular routine if you keep a portable saw in the pickup.’

      YES!!!! Its a must have item for any country boy’s truck. Every bed has one around here for most of the year. Mine’s a Stihl 311- used to be an 044 FarmBoss till a pill head relieved me of it.

    • American Yeoman December 1, 2020 at 15:39

      Guys, I really appreciate all the comments and I will try to incorporate some of them into future articles. I’m not a lumberjack or an arborist- not formally trained in it…I’ve just cut a bunch of wood over the years and its something of a hobby of mine actually. With all the Green New Deal BS that I’m sure is coming etc….I really think being as energy self sufficient as we can be will be important to being independent of the system and powers that be in the future. If anything I’m sharing can help other decent folks further along that path, it’s a win for me.

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