When I moved to Pike County in 1981 the house I bought had a functional wood burning insert in the fireplace.  I was young and dumb enough to decide to heat the house exclusively by wood that first winter.

    The house was two stories but the master bedroom and all the other rooms we used were on the ground floor.  I tacked sheets over the stairwell to keep the warm air from going up them, helping keep the lower level warm.

    Although I had never cut wood with a chain saw, I felt like I could do it.  I went to Sears and bought a mid-size saw and learned how it worked, always fearing it a little, especially after reading and hearing about accidents folks had with them.

    There was and old tree house in the edge of the woods and I tore it down and built a wood shed with the tin and plywood.  Then I started cutting down some of the trees behind the house.

    The four-acre lot my house was on was covered with trees with just a small front and back yard. I wanted a garden, so I started by cutting an area behind the house, trying to open it up enough. 

I cut about 16 big oak and hickory trees and a few sweetgum and popular, cutting each piece about 18 inches long to fit my insert, and splitting the trunks by hand with a maul and stacking the wood.

    I was much younger then!

    But I really enjoyed using the saw and splitting the wood. Those trees more than filled up my small woodshed so I expanded it some and had enough wood for the whole winter, keeping a fire going all the time.

    I learned a lot about wood that year.  The few sweetgum and popular trees I cut taught me popular splits very easily and has pretty colors inside, but burns fast and does “pop” while burning.  I had to keep the insert doors closed!  Sweetgum burned fast, too, and its twisted grains made it almost impossible to split. 

But I never wasted any wood, I burned the sweetgum and popular as well as any fast-burning pine I got during the day. At night I wanted slow burning oak and hickory.

    My favorite wood to split was red oak, its straight grains made it easy to split up into chunks just right for my fireplace.  Hickory was next since it split easily and burned very slowly. Whiteoak was fairly easy to split and also lasted a long time.  With any of them I could fill my insert at bedtime, shut the air vents and still have heat the next morning.

    For five years I heated exclusively with wood, even turning the pilot light off on my furnace.  Linda learned to bring in the wood and start a good fire with the kindling I kept in a big box, and she did a good job when I was gone on fishing trips.

    Then one spring I went to a Top Six tournament for five days. It was April and the weather should have been stable but a cold front dropped the nighttime lows below freezing and highs were only in the 40s.

The day I left there was a good supply of wood in the house and plenty in the woodshed.  But the day after I left Linda got sick and developed pneumonia, making it impossible for her to bring in wood and keep a fire going.

We lit the pilot light when I got home.

I continued to burn wood but never shut off the furnace again.  It was great supplemental heat and saved propane. But cancer three years ago weakened me to the point I have not tried to cut wood since then. I miss it and am going to get out my saw and try to use it.  I desperately need the exercise, and maybe I will do something I enjoy!