Rolling Dog Farm Blog

First, just a quick update to report that we had no major impact from Sandy — no damage, and the power was out for only about 90 minutes. We had 1.5 inches of rain over 36 hours, quite a bit less than we get during some intense thunderstorms. So we are feeling very fortunate indeed.

I took the photo above on Saturday a week ago. I was hauling more firewood from the place where we cut the logs up and stacking it in the woodshed. This is a never-ending process this time of year, and continues right through until spring. We burn far more cords of wood — about 14 to 16 — during the heating season than we could ever stack in the woodshed, so we're always replenishing the supply of fuel for the wood boiler (whose chimney and roof you see in the background.)

We had friends visiting from Ovando, Tim and Cindy J., the previous week, and Tim remarked with some astonishment, "You know, they use hardwoods for firewood here — we think hardwoods are too valuable to burn!" Indeed, it's a funny thing about New England — few people here consider using softwoods, i.e., conifers like pine, fir and spruce, for firewood. New Englanders consider "real" firewood to be hardwoods like ash, maple, cherry, and birch. That's because in general hardwoods deliver more BTUs per volume than softwoods, and because they're denser, they burn longer and produce hotter coals. If you tried to sell someone firewood made of spruce or pine, you'd get run out of a town on a rail (made of hardwood, no doubt).

But out west, your only choice for firewood is softwoods, and everyone stays warm just fine, thank you. We had the same view as Tim when we first arrived in New Hampshire … the thought of burning maple or birch for heat seemed very strange to us. Three years later, it still does, but hardwoods are what we typically burn.

In the photo I'm hauling the wood — these are whole logs about 30 inches long, which I load right into the wood boiler — on our Kubota RTV utility vehicle. The small bed on that vehicle can hold half a ton — 1,000 pounds — about the same as a Ford F-150 pick-up. 

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