No Tools Required! Make A Firewood Holder In Five Minutes

At last, I found an easy, inexpensive, tidy way to store a few days' worth of firewood, just in time for cold weather. And I didn't even need to use any tools to make it, because the lumberyard made the cuts for me.

Our wood burning stove is our primary heat source, and I love it! I'm warmer in winter in this house than I've ever been in any home we've lived in. An old-fashioned box-type stove with no fans or windows or gadgets, needing no special kinds of fuel, it works perfectly to radiate warmth at an even temperature through our main living areas without drafts or cold/hot spots.

We store the cordwood we buy (or that my dad cuts for us) in the alley behind the fence, and I bring up enough for a few days at a time. This is where the problem has been - I've never found a good way to stack the wood I need near the carport door, to keep it off the ground, dry... and tidy.  The log holders sold in stores are either expensive, too small or else way too long for my space, or frankly, most look awfully flimsy.

Then I found this clever idea on Pinterest. Unlike so many of the elaborate projects on there, this looked like something I could actually make (LOL!).

I bought a couple of 8 foot long two by fours (they are actually about 1 1/2" by 3 1/2" because the mill measures before they are planed smooth), and two concrete cinder blocks. The ones I used are about 8"x8"x15".  Two by fours are stronger than one by fours, so they are best for this project.

The nice folks at Home Depot cut the lumber in half for me, so it fit into my Jeep Cherokee easily.

Stand the cinder block on their sides with the holes up, right against each other. They need to be touching in order to keep them stable. You'll need about 48" clearance width at the top.

Drop one four foot 2x4 into each hole and lean it out.  That's it!  Less than 5 minutes, not counting shopping time.  Total cost for everything - $13 and change.

I loaded several sizes of logs into it. You could also make two of them, and have one for large logs and one for smaller pieces and kindling.

Another new thing this year is twig bundles (see them on top?), which I made to see if they are more effective/efficient than just breaking small dead-falls as needed. With 3 full-grown pecan trees and one bur oak in our yard, we have a LOT of small limbs to dispose of over the course of a year. I just wrapped them up with twine. I've used them for my first fire and it certainly was simpler "at the time". My hope is that the twig bundles will work well for those warm Texas winter days we don't need an all-day fire but just need to knock the chill off.  

This little project is already getting our colder season off to a good start.  Thank you for stopping by, and I hope you stay toasty warm this winter! :-)

Why Waste Lump Charcoal?

Once in a while I put the ashes on the garden, but there is too much to do that with all of it, since our primary heat is from the wood stove. However, I never realized what good stuff I was throwing away! Here's how to save genuine hardwood charcoal from your fireplace ashes, that burns better, longer, hotter than glued-together briquettes! :-)



If you enjoy the video, please "Like" and subscribe on You Tube! There is a wonderful community over there and I am having a blast making new friends. Come visit! :-)

Roses & Pecan Trees are Blooming!

 These are from the only rosebush that survived the drought, but oh aren't they gorgeous! Paul commented that they "are almost florescent": a beautiful orangey coral color.

Just as glorious in their own way are the fresh, day-glo green, male pecan tree flowers. You can see the long strands of pollen-rich catkins hanging in clusters. The female flowers are too small to see, but they are just above the catkins - Pecan trees only make female blossoms if all conditions are right: enough water, enough sugars and starches....and to date no one has figured out a scientific way to consistently predict the crop. It is so unique each year that pecans are called "God's crop" by the botanists and growers who study these trees.

 

I am betting on a great crop from our trees this year, in part because it has been several years since we had a bountiful one, and we've had good rain (thank you, Father God, for answering our prayers and sending rain to tide Texas over despite all predictions to the contrary. The drought is not gone, but we are grateful things are much improved in most of the state).

One of our trees is a native pecan that has the sweetest nuts. I gathered 100 pounds (before shelling) from it alone our first year here. We are just finishing them up (shelled and froze them in vacuum packs), so it would be a great blessing to have a new crop to stock up again.

If you want to produce as much of your own food as possible, do consider nut trees. You can have them in cities, and even a small lot can have a pecan tree. They produce a huge amount of high-calorie, healthy food with minimal effort once they are established. Pecan trees will not grow everywhere, but here they just come up from forgotten nuts that get buried. So look around and see what grows well where you live, and add the best possible "Edible landscaping" to your yard! :-)

First Wood Fire of the Season

I lit our first fire of the season on Sunday, and had a fire all day today while it was cold and drizzly outside. Ah it is nice! Our stove is fully closed, so you can't see the fire inside and there is no odor. It provides radient heat that doesn't dry out the air. We think it is the best heat either of us have ever had.

I talk about how I build a fire in our wood stove, how I load it, tend it and manage it, but I am no expert. :-) Safety First! Please get expert advice for YOUR stove and YOUR situation before building your own fire so that you can be safe. Each stove is different, and some have different tolerances for how the fire is supposed to be built, tended and managed. Do your homework. Talk to your local Fire Department and the folks you bought your stove from. Be sure to do research for your particular brand and type of stove. Online, Woodheat.org (linked from my sidebar) has been a great help to me and is a good starting point.

As mentioned previously, we have oak firewood, and some pecan. I save all the little branches and deadfalls from our pecan trees all year and use these for my kindling (little sticks and bigger sticks). They work great. When I have time, I break them into pieces and stack them in buckets or tubs, then I can just bring some up under the carport to have handy. I bring up firewood in my wheelbarrow, one load at a time because I do not want it stacked near the house (too tempting for pests). We are keeping our eyes open for a good wood rack we can put under the carport, but in the meantime my wheelbarrow works fine.

For some reason, I always have a little trouble building a brand new fire in a clean stove. Once there's some ash cover underneath the grate, a new fire catches easy.

It took me most of the first winter, and then I finally got the hang of it. The old Boy Scout method seems to work best for me: a pile of little sticks, bigger sticks on top of that, and finally small logs. Once those small logs are burning well, I can add a bigger log. When there is a nice bed of coals and still some fire on the larger logs, I can add a big, unsplit log, turn down the damper and it will burn slowly all night.


I use the fire starters made from sawdust and wax - I buy them ready made and break one in half and put a half on each end on top of the little sticks, under the bigger sticks. Then I light those. Once they are burning I close the stove door and open the damper. When those logs are all burning nicely, I open the door and add a bigger log, then I can close the damper a little and it will burn at just the right speed for our stove.

That's it really. Our stove has a temperature gauge on top and I can "adjust" the external temperature (as measured by the gauge) by opening and closing the damper. The damper is what allows air into the stove. The more air coming in, the faster the burn. Too little air and
the fire will go out (although the logs may still smolder a long time so always assume there are hot coals in a stove).


I try to keep the gauge at about 300 degrees. That seems to be a good temp for our house and is not too high for my stove. It can be dangerous to let the temp get too high, and can even damage the stove itself. Here again is a place where you need to research for your specific stove to know what is optimal. That is still very hot, and children, pets and flammable things should be kept clear.

Oh and one last tip: ALWAYS open the damper before opening the door to your stove. Otherwise smoke (and maybe even fire) will come out into the room!

Hackberries and Hackberry Firewood

There was a small hackberry scrub tree next to the road where I gathered prickly pears, and I had to eat a couple of the ripe hackberries. Wow that sure took me back to my childhood. They were "the" street tree in my hometown when I was growing up. The boys may remember the trees in front of Amos house, and one in Mema and Nandy's front yard? There also used to be hackberry trees lining 5th Avenue alongside Amos' house and going for blocks. These were all removed when they widened the road when I was about 12 or so.


There are many varieties of Hackberry, ranging from those that get large enough to be stately lining streets, to scrubby wild ones that grow out in West Texas. They are a rather short lived tree, maybe 50 years or so, and their wood is soft.


Birds love the berries, and they are a wonderful source of food for them. For people...not so much. Yes they have a great flavor, but have you ever eaten one? Imagine a BB (like you shoot from a bb gun), coated with apple peeling. That's it. The little bit of skin is the only thing edible - the inside is an indigestible hard ball. But that little bit of skin tastes just as good and sweet as apple peeling.

Because the berries are small and have no juice, they are not messy, thus their use as street trees.

People here tell me they use hackberry wood in the early part of the winter or spring when they only need a quick warm up to the house. It burns fast and takes the chill off on those cool mornings when you won't need a fire later in the day. I haven't had any of it, so I can't speak from experience yet. If I get the chance to get some from tree trimmers this year, I will try it.

UPDATE Aug 8, 2013: Winter before last, we discovered that some of our firewood was hackberry. How did we find out? Our neighbor came to beg us not to burn that wood any more because it stinks! Our stove is enclosed so we don't smell the wood, but one low pressure day had driven the smoke a block over to their house. When we smelled it we agreed it smells horrible! I am so grateful that she was willing to tell us about it. We threw away the rest of that and changed our source of wood. So nope, I can't recommend hackberry as a source for heat if you live anywhere near humans. :-(

Weather Forecasts: How Much Firewood Do We Need This Winter?

Used to, the only thing we had to do to prepare for heating in the winter was to make sure there was a match stick long enough to light the gas furnace of the central heating unit.

We do not have central heat in this house. We have a wood stove for most of our heat, and one of the new things I am learning to do (in addition to learning how to build a fire - that will be fun to write about when winter comes) is to store up enough fuel for the winter.

The first thing I learned was that we had to get wood that was cut in pieces short enough to actually fit into our stove. They can be pretty big around but if they are longer than 21" they will not fit into the fire box.

How often in life does that question "Will it fit?" turn out to be THE essential one?


One of the best sites I found that answered my questions about using wood is Woodheat.org. Loads of good, helpful information. Our woodstove was in place when we bought the house so their chapter on firewood has been a HUGE help to us.

The wood available in this part of Texas is generally 4 different tree families: Oak, Mesquite, Pecan, Hackberry. Hardwoods burn very hot, soft woods burn very fast. We chose oak, as the best-of-the-best. Oak does not cost any more than other wood in this area. We also have some pecan because it came from having our own trees trimmed. Pecan wood is wonderful for barbequing with. It gives a good flavor to food. We are hoping to use it for that, and stick to the oak for heating.

Wood apparently needs to sit for a while (6 months) after it has been cut so that it can "season" (meaning for it to dry out so it will burn better). So, it should be gotten in advance. We had an opportunity last year to stock up on wood. We had no clue how much volume of wood it would take to keep us warm. As it turned out, the winter was pretty mild, and we used about one cord of wood (a "Cord" is a stack that measures 4' tall by 4' deep by 8' long). We have about 2 cords remaining.

But do we have enough? That question has me looking at long range forecasts.

Texas weather is goofy. Something like 6 different climate regions, 8 different hardiness zones (which do not necessarily coincide with the climate regions), and a squillion little microclimates within it all. Our winters are mild compared to the Northern and Midwest states. The main concern with whether or not it will be a hard winter is whether cold fronts will hang about and keep it cold for a week at a time, or whether it will be so warm that snow won't even stick.

I've found a promising site Called Texas Winter (txwinter.com), also linked from my Blog List, that is focused exclusively on forecasting for this coming winter in Texas. I live right near one of the dividing lines for their snow predictions, but they are predicting good snowfalls for nearly all of Texas! WooHoo! Their forecast is available from the Winter Maps tab on the site.

On the home page, they have various articles that give insight into weather prediction, including historical El Nino effects. It's a good site to follow that is written in plain english with lots of helpful information.

I was going to write about weather signs and lore but this is getting too long! I will write about those later in the week. Thanks so much for reading, and have a wonderful day.