Sagebrush & Solar

We recently purchased three cords of firewood and let me tell you — that is a LOT of wood. We’re still figuring out what to do with it. A cord is 4x4x8 (128 cubic feet). The term cord comes from back in the day, when it used to be tied in a bundle with a cord.

Prior to purchasing a wood burning stove (and though we aren’t very close to using it, we remain optimistic that maybe we can use it in January or February), I never paid much attention to how my parents acquired wood. Maybe if I went camping I’d think about it, perhaps buying an overpriced bundle at WinCo or ambling off into the bushes to gather some. But wood for an entire season? Nope.

Where to get firewood

The type of wood may factor into your decision making; hardwoods, such as oak, maple or birch, burn hottest and longest. Around here (Idaho), we have pine trees and softwoods; so we went with that.

We paid about $380 per cord of red fir. At the risk of sounding like a nerd, it’s beautiful wood; it smells great and was run through a splitter. If you’d rather buy your wood and have it delivered, consider checking out Craigslist or local Facebook Buy, Sell, Trade groups. We found our guy through word of mouth (my parents).

You can also buy small bundles of wood at local grocery stores, feed stores and gas stations; this isn’t the most cost effective way to stock up for a season, but if you’re looking to stock up on a few bundles in case of emergency, that can be an easy way to do so.

If you would rather save some money and don’t mind pouring a little sweat, hard labor and potentially some gas money in it, you can always chop down your own firewood. Make sure to check out your local forestry office to see what kind of permits may be required and be sure to follow local regulations.

How to store your firewood

In the short term, we’re going to stack our wood on pallets and cover with a tarp. Fancy, I know. But it gets the job done, and raises them off the ground to prevent rot.

Our original plan was to build a nice loafing shed…then we calculated the cost. My backup plan was to craft together a rough pallet shed to throw a tarp over…but we have so many other things going on and I don’t have enough baby-free time to tackle a project like that. So, for less than $100 and simply the time it takes to stack wood, we’ve got ourselves some firewood storage.

There are many different ways to stack and store firewood to keep it from rotting; you can stack it against a shed or building, in a shed or building, craft a cheap DIY structure, build a lean to off of an existing shed, etc. There are several large homesteading groups on Facebook; you may consider joining one and asking for ideas and inspiration from its members, or check out Pinterest.

One of the most difficult parts of building from the ground up is realizing that it’s going to take a long time to get to where we would like to be — and embracing those less than perfect projects and outcomes along the way.