(Continued from Part 2.)
When the 2024/2025 woodstove season started, I had roughly seven cords of stacked, seasoned wood in the shipping container. We use about two cords of wood each winter. My goal is to always have at least two years of firewood on hand. To me, three years is an insurance policy. If I am unable to gather firewood one summer, I do not need to worry. I will simply gather more the following summer. I also store everything I need to gather, cut, carry, and split wood to prep it for storage. Our log splitter, chainsaws, axes, hatchets, crosscut saws, chains, kindling splitters, and kindling storage racks are all housed in the shipping container. This spring, after I tidy up the end I was pulling from, I am going to install a heavy-duty metal rack to store the tools on. I will also use the rack to store all of our canning supplies and outdoor cooking gear.
Wood Varieties to Burn
I have met people who obsess over which wood to burn because of the BTUs (British Thermal Unit – A measure of heat) certain woods have. I know people who will go out of there way and only harvest/burn lodgepole pine when there are other varieties in the same area that will burn hotter and longer, like fir and oak. I know others who will not burn other varieties because of the amount of ash or smell it creates. To each their own. Find a variety of wood that is readily available in your area, that you prefer, and use it. I burn almost any variety of wood I can get my hands on, but my favorite is fir. I love fir for many reasons. It is abundant near my home. It splits straight, so stacking is easy and neat. It makes great kindling that ignites fast. Most of all, I love burning fir, because even though it is considered a “soft wood”, it heats my home very well. |
Seasoned hardwood burns longer and hotter, but fir suits us just fine. I clean my chimney once a month and I rarely have much creosote buildup. (Creosote is a byproduct of burning wood. If creosote is allowed to build up too long, it can ignite and create a flu fire. Flu fires are extremely dangerous and can damage your chimney, stove/flue pipe. If you have a flu fire, have your stove and piping checked out by a professional.)
Another type of wood that I like to burn is Red Iron Bark Eucalyptus. When we bought our home, there was a large Eucalyptus grove at the very back of the property the previous owner planted. I am no fan of Eucalyptus. In fact, I have a great disdain for it. Eucalyptus trees are extremely messy. Each month of the year, a Eucalyptus tree drops something to the ground, be it leaves, bark, branches, seed pods, flowers, etc. On our property, if there is an ornamental, non-native tree that does not produce food, it gets cut down.
As much as I disklike Eucalyptus, the Red Iron Bark variety has become a formidable adversary. I have grown to respect and admire the big, gnarly, tough tree. The first one I cut down, had about a five foot radius and was about forty feet tall. The tree, which was still very green and alive, destroyed one saw chain while cutting it and put a lot of strain on my chainsaw. I quickly learned why they are called iron bark. It is an extremely dense, solid hardwood. The inside colors of the tree are absolutely beautiful, consisting of a mixture of very warm, dark orange to light brown colors. It took about two years to fully season, but it is some of the best hardwood for heating our home. When it burns, it has a very sweet, cherry-like smell. The Red Iron Bark produces a type of flower that “blooms” several times a year, even in the winter. Because of this, we have resident hummingbirds and our neighbor places his honeybees near my only remaining Red Iron Bark tree. His honey is some of the best I have ever had.
Some of the other varieties of Eucalyptus we have, when fully seasoned, is a very soft wood. I try not to store this near the house, because it tends to have burrowers and/or larvae in the wood. This wood tends to get used in our campfire pit or given to friends for camping trips.
I know many people who burn any wood, regardless of diameter. I have seen entire wood piles that consisted of small branches and twigs. I am a lot pickier and will not bring home any wood that is smaller than two inches in diameter. I would rather save time and energy picking up trash cans full of dry pinecones. Each fall, during an annual hunting trip, I fill at least three thirty-five-gallon trash cans with ponderosa, and/or sugar pine pinecones. Sugar Pine pinecones are great because of their size, but they tend to be extremely fast burning because of the amount of sap. Ponderosa Pinecones tend to be the right size and have the right sap content. Each time I light my woodstove, I use two to three Ponderosa Pinecones under a couple pieces of kindling. They do not burn long, but they burn long enough, and hot enough, to ignite the other wood in the stove.
Wood Storage Pests
Exactly seven days after I set the container on the raised pad foundation, I heard a high-pitch barking coming from the container. I stopped in my tracks, knowing the shrill sound, and began scanning the area hoping my ears were deceiving me. To my chagrin, the ground squirrels had arrived and began digging holes and tunnels along the bottom edge of the container. You may remember reading my SurvivalBlog article, Homesteading, A Trappers Perspective. I have successfully trapped copious amounts of animals, ground squirrels included. This particular colony of ground squirrels tested all my skills and my mental fortitude.
Some of you may be wondering why I don’t want ground squirrels under my shipping container. The first reason is I do not want them destroying the foundation pad I put it. The pad was made from three dump truckloads of dirt, which was then compacted down with a Sheep’s Foot compactor. After the pad was sufficiently packed and leveled, a load of gravel was spread over it to keep the dirt from eroding. I want the pad to last for many, many years. The second reason is, ground squirrels not only carry diseases, but they eat our fruits and vegetables, and gnaw on our irrigation pipes and hoses, which has caused massive flooding in the past. It does not matter if I see one ground squirrel, or one thousand on my property, I declare war.
Historically, I usually use dry cat food, or peanut butter to catch ground squirrels. After zero success for two weeks, I had to change my tactics before the colony got bigger and made more tunnels in my foundation. I am fairly certain these squirrels had already been trapped and released by some neighbors. They were trap-savvy. I know of at least one neighbor who has “relocated” the squirrels he trapped, and another who feeds and creates habitat for the ground squirrels in their yard. Unfortunately, the “habitat” also houses giant wood rats and likely snakes. After those unsuccessful weeks, I deployed the squirrel-sized cage traps. You may recall I do not have much love for these sized traps. I also changed the bait to a homemade peanut butter and chocolate concoction.
After setting the small cage traps with the new bait, I immediately caught three squirrels in the first two days. I started thinning out the colony quickly, and even caught several wood rats in the process. After a couple of weeks of successful trapping, the traps remained empty for several days in a row. I filled in all the holes along the edge of the shipping container, and they have stayed that way for several months now. This was the first, but it will not be the last group of squirrels that will try to make the underside of my woodshed shipping container their home.
Since I caught so many squirrels in the small cage traps, I have grown to appreciate those traps a little more. I still find the size not good for much more than squirrels or rats, but they did the job I needed them to do. I chose to use these small traps because of their ability to get into tight areas and also because of the smaller surface area of the pan inside. If I had used a larger, raccoon-sized cage trap, the squirrel(s) could have easily jumped over the pan, gotten the bait and left without ever setting the trap off. I have had this happen many times.
I have caught dozens of squirrels in large cage traps, but they were not trap-savvy. Also, the bigger traps tend to need a little more weight to depress the pan. The small rodent-sized traps are small enough that the squirrels had no choice but to step on the pan with their full body weight, which in turn drops the door, keeping the animal inside. As I said, I am still not a huge fan of the small cage traps, but they do have a place in my trap collection for situations like this. As always, tie a length of paracord or cable to your trap and secure it to something close by. I have lost several traps to hungry predators when I didn’t tie them off properly.
As for the inside of the shipping container, I have not had any issues with rodents or other pests yet. The container is watertight and there are no real areas where rodents can get in if all the doors remain closed. I do have some mouse traps set inside, just to be safe.
(To be concluded tomorrow, in Part 4.)