I Wrapped a Cord in a Blue Tarp All Summer. It Burned a Third Faster Than the Bare Wood.

You stacked five cords in April. Somewhere around the second week of February you are going to find a row and a half left and a long stretch of bare pallet, and the arithmetic will not work. Five cords did not burn. A cord and a half left that pile without going through the stove, and the way you stacked it is where it went. Every man who burns wood has seven rules in his head about storing it, and he follows them without checking one. Last April I checked all seven. Seven ricks, an eighth of a cord each, same red oak off the same tree, split the same day, each stored by one rule only. A meter on a fresh face the first of every month. In December each rick went through the same stove, twenty-two pounds a load, with a thermometer and a stopwatch. Bark side up. Season it in the shade. Stack it against the house. Stacked in September, dry by Christmas. Rounds dry fine, just slower. Single row, off the ground, top covered, sides open. And the seventh, the one more people follow than any other, which gave me two hours fifty on the same weight the open rick gave four hours ten, and which my grandfather's tally book explains in the one column nobody else keeps: cords stacked, and cords burned. Harlan Sawyer. Sawyer Ridge, Pocahontas County, West Virginia. Forty-two years in the timber, 1969 to 2011, and forty-five winters doing this arithmetic. Stack it dry, friend. It keeps. A note before anybody writes in: one tree, one yard, one summer, on this ridge. Your wind and rain are not mine. A pin meter on a fresh split face in the middle of the piece is the only honest number; twenty percent or under is the EPA Burn Wise figure, not mine.