Hard to believe, but we did a bit o’loggin’ again a couple of days ago.  And it’s December!  Sal had wrangled the odd log to the beach over the previous week of very high tides and so we had a few to cut up, anyway.  But, really, that’s just an ‘everyday’ kind of thing even tho it is late in the year.  Livin’ remote on the west coast, whenever you see a good log floating by, you take it. That’s just life out here.

To help you grasp the concept of this ‘everyday’ pickin’-up, salvage/gatherer mentality, you city-folks, it’s like you stooping down to pick up a twenty dollar bill you find on the street.  It doesn’t happen everyday but everyday it happens, you’d stop to get it.  Most of us would even stop our car and get out in the rain to pick up a $20.  Right?  Well, a high-floater at least 30 feet long is the equivalent of finding a $20. Well, Douglas Fir, anyway.  Hemlock maybe $12 or $15.

The other day we saw a big ‘butt-end’ Cedar on the beach.  At least six feet around at the thickest part and maybe 15 feet long.   This puppy represented the motherlode of kindling to us.  Maybe even a shake or two.  We could be set for fire-starter for a few years with this piece!  To use the same analagous measuring stick, this Cedar was a $50 bill.  We picked it up.

“Wow, Dave!  You think in terms of money when you log salvage?”

“No.  Not really.  I draw such a parallel for those of you who don’t find, chop and burn wood every year.  But, I must admit, having next years logs already drying does, in fact, feel like money in the bank”.

When I think about it, I actually feel that way about the clams and the oysters awaiting their fate as my future paella or clam chowder, too.  I don’t really value them in terms of money, per sé, but they do feel like ‘money-in-the-bank’.  Maybe food-in-the-larder is a better description.  It is different – kind of a security thing.  Weird, really.

But, back to wood.  Fir is the recognized ‘best’ wood for heating your house out here.  Provided it is dry, of course.  If you read the wood charts that give the BTU or caloric rating, Fir is at the top of the west coast woods.  And most people seek, find, chop and burn that, if they can.

Dry Alder is also good.  But, for some reason, we don’t seem to gather that so much.  I guess it is because less of it is already cut, trimmed and floating by for our convenience.  Logging companies just ‘trash and slash’ Alder.  It doesn’t grow to sawmill thickness.  Fir and Hemlock are the industrial grade woods and so they are the ones that sometimes escape the booms and become hazards to navigation and potential stove-wood for the local oportunists such as ourselves.

Hemlock is not bad at all.  In fact, by the caloric ratings it is 75-80% of what Fir is and, because it is more plentiful, it really is a good comparable.  You need a bit more of it but there is a lot more of it floating by.  The trouble with Hemlock is that it seems to retain the water longer.  So it has the added negative of requiring more drying time.  Since we have a lot of Hemlock, we are obliged to ‘get in our wood’ at least one year ahead and this year we got in enough to be two years ahead.  By doing that, we have managed to make the Hemlock work for us.  And we are feeling a bit smug about it.  Thus this blog entry.

But here’s a surprise (although I know it is not one to those experienced folks out here), Pine is maybe the best of all.  Generally speaking Pine doesn’t rate that high on charts.  And who am I to argue with the caloric tables?  So, we never sought Pine.  But sometimes Pine seeks and finds you.  Over the years, a few old Pines have fallen and, of course, I clear them up, buckiing them to length and throwing them in the woodshed.

That last tree I wrote about that fell against the other tree during the storm and threatened my solar panels was/is an old Pine.

But our coastal pines are like hardwood.  They are usually only 6 inches in diameter when they are 100 years old!  To have a thick 8″/9″ diameter Pine log is to be looking at a 150 year-old tree!  Maybe older.  The rings on that tree are so close together they are hard to distinguish.  And the wood is heavy.  Heavy and dense.  And full of resin, I think.

Anyway, I burned a few Pine pieces over the last few days.  Ones that had been dried and in the pile.  And it was good.  I am not so sure that I am right about this but I am pretty sure that a piece of Pine will burn at least twice as long and even hotter than a similar sized piece of Fir.  I am sure of that if I just use my own experience.

Now there may be some downsides like too much resin (creosote) or whatever but damn!  Once you get that puppy burning, it goes like mad and does so for a good long time.

I’ll be salvaging a lot more Pine deadfall this coming year.  And to think I have just been turning my nose up at it until lately.