Cutting Firewood
We cut most of our firewood in the winter when the temperatures are cold. This firewood is for next winter, giving it about a year to dry. Usually the firewood comes from dead or fallen trees, as in the case of this large white oak.
The tree had gone over the previous summer, probably brought down by wind. You can see the broken roots at the left.
We cut the bolts at 15.5 inches long. We measure beforehand though nothing is too precise. We want the wood pieces when split to be about 16 inches long for our new wood stove. This tree was about 24 inches in diameter at chest height when it was standing, so the bolts are large and heavy.
We cut up almost the whole tree, including the limbs until they are smaller than about 3 inches in diameter. Even the small pieces can be used as kindling. The larger unsplit rounds make good logs to put on the fire to burn all night.
There are several different kinds of white oaks. The tree we were cutting is a chestnut oak and has distinctive deeply furrowed bark. White oak puts out almost as much heat when dry as hickory, more heat than red oak.
We stack and cover the cut and split wood so that it can dry before hauling it back home in the fall. This is a start on the stacked wood from this tree.
