Summer time! Family’s coming to visit while you’re painting the house. You’re working, putting up fish, camping, celebrating your anniversary, Fourth of July, birthdays and looking at the rest of the obstacle course between you and your wood groove. Why not pick up the phone and order a few cords? It’s great. You’re done and you’ve helped the local economy.
The thing is, if you wait until the fall rains start, ordering wood is like looking for love at last call.
Wood has to season. It has to dry out. It’s a science project for dads to weigh fresh cut pieces, then weigh them again every week until they’re constant. Fresh wood can be almost half water by weight. Lighting wet kindling is a pain and it’s depressing to watch water and steam boiling out the ends of wood in your stove. More creosote goes up the chimney and your neighbors downwind are disgusted.
When you buy a cord agree on price in advance. Ask if it’s a full cord and if the cost includes delivery. A full cord is 4’ by 4’ by 8’, though if it’s packed very tight the volume will be less. Some sellers give a substantial price break if you pick it up or if they sell rounds and you split them. Some sellers will stack it for you but they charge more.
Ask what kind of wood it is and how long it’s been down. Southeast Alaska has mostly alder, hemlock, spruce and cedar. Wood burners down south wouldn’t touch those because they’ve got hardwoods that burn longer and hotter. Density determines how much heat is in different woods. Alder is usually considered the best around Juneau but hemlock is close and may have more BTUs than alder depending on where and how fast the trees grew.
Ask how long ago the tree was cut. If a tree has been down and off the ground for a year it will burn just fine in a few months. Fresh cut wood will take longer. It’s also worth asking the seller to include a good sized round for you to split kindling on. The advantage of our softwoods is they split and catch fire more easily.
When wood is delivered, stack it in the shed or on pallets away from the house. Cover wood loosely when it rains; uncover when it’s sunny or windy with no rain. In October you’ll be glad you did. Having a couple cords in the yard is like love finding you once you’re not looking. All of a sudden wood is heading your way from all directions and you can forage and stack at leisure.
For gathering your own wood, there are tons available from salvage, private, city, state or federal lands. Salvaging clean wood like used lumber and pallets is great so long as they haven’t been painted or treated with preservatives. If you find a pallet that is stamped with “MB” don’t use that one; it’s been treated with methyl bromide, which is toxic.
Private owners without a woodstove are often happy to let you take a downed tree just to get it out of there. More than once an owner not only gave me a downed tree but said he was going to take down more and let me have those, too. Easement crews cutting wood along the road often leave wood on the side of the road.
Old timers like Tiger Olsen of Taku Harbor used to cruise the beaches for logs. They’d lasso one at high tide, tow them home to the beach in front of the house and cut them up. It’s convenient. That said, the International Association of Certified Home Inspectors doesn’t recommend it. Firewood that’s been in salt water can corrode a chimney stack faster and salt with burning wood can synthesize carcinogens like dioxins that go up the chimney and down into your yard.
The slickest wood gatherer I know is a homesteader who lives beside a river and has tide flats out front. He set an anchor in the flats with a long rope attached. When trees are falling into the swollen river he and his wife get the binoculars and watch out the upstairs window for a suitable log, a hundred footer or so, heading their way. He rows out to it with the rope, secures it with a log dog (giant staple) and lets the river push the attached log around in an arc to just below his yard where he bucks it up when the tide goes out.
City and Borough of Juneau: Except for public places like parks, schools, public facilities, hills that might slide, etc., you can take dead and down trees for use on city land in Juneau. You don’t need a permit. You can usually get all you need fairly close to home and close to the road. For those reasons CBJ land is popular with wood gatherers. Accessible wood doesn’t stick around long. You’re supposed to remove unused parts of the tree from roads, streams and ditches.
State of Alaska Forests: In Southeast Alaska you can cut firewood at the Haines State Forest. You need a permit, but it’s free for up to 10 cords of dead and downed wood. You can also purchase a permit to cut live wood at $10 per cord — three cord minimum, 10 cord maximum. There are some scattered small parcels of state lands between Haines and Juneau that are sometimes available. Permits are good for the year.
On South Gravina Island in Ketchikan you can get a permit to collect firewood — dead and down only, for $10 per cord with a three cord minimum/10 cord maximum. You’re required to have your permit with you when cutting.
There are some rules about how high the stumps should be, how much of the tree you’re required to take, not leaving slash in streams and so on. Road accessible areas are limited and the easiest places to access are picked over. If you come across a stack of logs they may be part of a timber sale and not up for grabs.
Federal Government: The Forest Service has some excellent programs for people gathering wood. In the Tongass, with a permit, you can gather 25 (!) cords of dead wood per year for personal use. That would be a wall of wood four feet high, four feet wide, and 200 feet long. The bad news for us is that most of that wood isn’t available in the Juneau area.
We do have the option of cutting two cords of alder per year out the road, just past Eagle Beach, between 29 and 34 mile. Permits and cutting map are at the Forest Service Office. A lot of that area would be hard to access and move wood out of.
In addition to firewood, the Forest Service has a salvage program where Alaskans can take 10,000 board feet of dead wood for saw logs at no charge. It’s not exactly free though. A person applies for and receives the permit, goes out with a forester who marks the trees, then the permit holder has them cut, skidded out, milled and shipped. That part is expensive but a lot of beautiful homes and decks in Southeast began this way.
*Note on spruce aphid infestation: Needle drop is very noticeable right now especially in lower elevations. If that’s going on with your trees and you’re thinking about setting systemic insecticide plugs like ACECAP into the trees, ACECAP literature says maximum results are when tree sap is in maximum upward flow (with some caveats). Cooperative Extension has a spruce aphid pamphlet. For specific questions email sisie.wilkie@alaska.edu or contact one of the local tree services/landscape people to see what they recommend. If a tree that’s been treated with ACECAP dies, I’d consider it to be treated wood and not use it in the wood stove.
• Dick Callahan is a Juneau writer. In April 2016, he won first place in the Alaska Press Club Awards for best outdoors and sports column in the state.
