woodpile

one of the items on the venture vermont challenge is  "Take a close look at a firewood pile and identify at least one species of wood in the pile (10 pts)" which can have a high degree of difficulty, depending on the woodpile, because identifying wood that's already cut is much more tricky than identifying trees.

...unless you have something like paper birch in you woodpile, in which case you don't have to look very hard.


i don't burn a lot of wood at home, so i'm blast if i remember what i had delivered fifteen years ago (yeah, i split a half cord with my next door neighbors and i can probably go two more years before i need more, unless we have a bad winter with a lot of power outages) so i went ahead an took a look at my woodpile.

i guess i could just guess, but i like to give these little projects due diligence.

so i found this handy website and i actually brought in some of my firewood to take a close look at the grain with a jeweler's loupe, just because.

here's my woodpile. on close inspection, it is mostly american beech (fagus grandifolia), which i have learned has too high a water content to be burned when first cut, but makes fine firewood when it is dried a season or two.

i have a few logs of white ash (fraxinus americana), and one or two pieces of white birch (betula papyrifera) besides. i also happen to know there are a few pieces of apple wood that i brought home for carving and may have been checked or otherwise poor carving and are now firewood. that's sort of a win, because apple burns with a sweet smell, and i probably won't burn it at home, but take it to camp for cooking.