wood for 2012 sugaring

[SugarSquirrel]

I have started to sugar this year, and have been fairly pleased with it, but the work is tough. i decided to sugar 1-1/2 months before season, and didnt have any wood to burn, so i bought some. My family farm owns tons of forest acres and i am wondering what the best breed of wood is to burn.

[adk1]

I have started to sugar this year, and have been fairly pleased with it, but the work is tough. i decided to sugar 1-1/2 months before season, and didnt have any wood to burn, so i bought some. My family farm owns tons of forest acres and i am wondering what the best breed of wood is to burn.

anything that you can get dry, most burn what they wont burn in their house..i.e. pine/hemlock..some mix in hardwood.

[TF Maple]

To answer the question of what is best, that would be most hardwoods and oak is near the top of that list.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I like to burn locust which is best to burn but not sure if you have any. I also burn oak, hickory and hard maple.

[brookledge]

I have had better luck through the years to burn soft wood with evaporators with out blowers. And with blower hardwood burns good. However like adk1 said If you burn wood in your house then use soft wood if you need to in the sugarhouse.
Also since I burn wood in the sugarhouse it promotes me to cut softwood and other junk wood like poplar that I normally wouldn't cut. It helps open the crowns more on my maples.
I really like hemlock also it is better than pine and is still a wood that I wouldn't cut for my house
Keith

[3rdgen.maple]

The never ending debate of hardwood versus softwood. Comes up alot. All I can say is that softwood makes my pan burn alot harder than hardwood. Might have to fire it more often but it sure does boil alot harder than the hardwoods. But thats my opinion.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

It is all good but to me and maybe to others it may come down to you only have so much space in the wood shed and I want to put the best wood in I can so I will get the maximum burn out of the wood I have because if I only burned all softwood I would have probably ran out of wood this year but with the same amount of wood in hardwood I boiled off over 5500 gallons of sap and could have boiled another 1200 to 1500. I do cut some softwood but is is minimal and sometimes some of the hardwood I cut has parts of the tree that is getting soft, so it is even less heat than solid softwood.

[PerryW]

We get some locust up here in northern NH, but I think it may have been planted. I have sawed quite a bit of it on my sawmill and the slabs really do throw the heat. Much too valuable to use in the evaporator for me. Log length hardwood is now about $100 per cord and I have a hard time GIVING my softwood slabs away. My woodshed holds 10 cords, so I'm good for 150 gallons of syrup; which is more than I usually make.

[buckeye gold]

Soft or hardwood, it's got to be dry for maximum heat. well seasoned hardwood is my choice, but that is also what I have most of. The only softwood I can get is white pine and I can't get it seasoned well enough until it gets pithy. I do run a blower and dry hickory and locust are hard to beat, but I also burn oak and sugar maple culls. Your wood will influence your per hour boil as much as anything else. I have already cut and stacked next season's wood. I have 9 cord ready and drying.

[3rdgen.maple]

Thats a great point Brandon on how much storage space is available. If that was the case for me I would be putting up more hardwood as well.