Free Firewood For Your Own Use and Sale or Trade to Others

Last winter I switched to wood heat after seeing how expensive one month of heating oil cost. This year the heating oil is $1 MORE than it was last year so I've been keeping an eye out for firewood all year long.

In my last post I discussed how to get free or cheap wood stoves so you can check it if you want to add this to the sort of things you salvage and recycle.

I'm lucky in that I live in a rural Western county and I am able to collect dead or fallen trees from nearby National Forest lands. Over the Spring and Summer my wife and I did haul in around 5 cords of cedar, pine and fir plus a small amount of oak. The cost for the permits here is $10 per cord. A cord, for those who don't know, is a stack of split firewood 4 feet by 8 feet by 4 feet or 128 cubic feet. At my elevation in the Sierra Cascades most folks burn around 5 cords per year.

As I did my salvage work I always had my eye out for firewood. Almost everywhere folks have trees fall down and evey time I see one, I stop and ask for it. Most of the time the folks say yes take it away or, if they burn wood themselves, I offer to split it with them if I do all the cutting into rounds (they split). I've gotten quite a bit of wood this way.

Another way I've gotten firewood is as a byproduct of my recent building salvage for used lumber. I've ended up with quite a pile of broken, warped and short pieces of lumber that makes great firewood and kindling.

Also, recently, I did a gigantic cleanup of all sorts of miscellaneous material from an estate sale. There were several acres of forest and as I made my rounds picking up various things I noted many downed trees. Near the end when it was clear to the folks that I would be doing what I said and take everything, I asked if I could take the downed trees if there was time. They agreed so I made sure I had time to do so. My last 3 truck and trailer loads was all nice dry firewood logs. I cut to a length that I could handle myself to save time and then cut into rounds and split at home.

So now I've got about 10 cords of dry firewood. 4 or 5 for myself and the rest for the following year or to trade for something else I can sell or use myself.

Good Luck

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