The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Firewood Essentials - The Next Generation Show

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

The Next Generation show with Ryan & Colin Buford. In this episode they discuss firewood essentials among other things. So cozy up by the fireplace or put a little linseed oil on the ax while you listen to one of PBNs best duos! Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/prepper-broadcasting-network--3295097/support.Join the Prepper Broadcasting Network for expert insights on #Survival, #Prepping, #SelfReliance, #OffGridLiving, #Homesteading, #Homestead building, #SelfSufficiency, #Permaculture, #OffGrid solutions, and #SHTF preparedness. With diverse hosts and shows, get practical tips to thrive independently – subscribe now!BECOME A SUPPORTER FOR EARLY ACCESS AND ADD FREE PODCASTS ALONG WITH ACCESS TO TONS OF PREPPER CONTENT!Get Prepared with Our Incredible Sponsors! Survival Bags, kits, gear www.limatangosurvival.comThe Prepper's Medical Handbook Build Your Medical Cache – Welcome PBN FamilyThe All In One Disaster Relief Device! www.hydronamis.com

SELFERLINDS, The Pepper Broadcasting Network. We have to hit the reset button and create a true culture of preparedness, starting at a very young age and filtering all the way up. We're going to do it. We're going to We're going to do. We're going to We're going to be able to be. Thank you.

We're going to be. Thank you. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Next Generation Show, where we delve deeper into the little things in life. Here, we explore the lost art of fatherhood, parenthood, and fundamentalist of preparedness for the world today. I'm your host, Ryan Buford, along with my co-host, Young Master Colin. And today we're broadcasting from the heart of the Pacific Northwest. We thank you for joining us, and there's not a moment to lose. So let's put the gloves on and get to...

get moving right in here today so we have we're on satellite internet at the moment so hopefully we're going to be able to make it through the show if we have audio issues I guess just let me know in chat it looks like we got a volcano in there and a couple of other folks

hopefully we'll join us a little bit later tonight it's a little bit of a surprise show tonight because we didn't get ahead of the game and get our usual pre preempt type announcements out on social media and on the website, but today we're going to be doing a show on firewood essentials, and we'll get into that here in a few minutes. But first, for those of you listening on the podcast, we thank you for the support,

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So yeah, let's get right into it, just in case we have a have to cut the show short. But today we're going to be talking about firewood essentials. And last year I did, we did a show on preparedness activities that you can do in the summertime to get ready for winter. And we dedicated about two or three minutes to talk briefly about firewood. and I thought it would be a good opportunity today to really dig into some of the finer points of firewood and some of the things that would make a big difference to those who may not be used to keeping firewood on hand or using firewood as their main source of heat. I know a lot of folks out there might fantasize about the idea of having a cabin in the woods

and, you know, being able to have all your resources right there at your fingertips to where you can go out and cut your own wood and harvest your own animals and, you know, grow a little bit of your own food, you know, the day after you go out and, you know, leave a large metropolitan area after some sort of collapse. And I can't tell you how far from the truth that actually is if you're not prepared ahead of time. so I guess to to break this down I just want to share a story with you that I experienced with my it was Colin's grandfather his his mom's dad and he and I went out chopping wood because you know that was their main source of heat and to me that was kind of weird I had never had a we had a fireplace in the house as a kid but we never used it and you know growing up we used electric heat and natural gas heat or whatever was available in the apartments or the houses that we lived in and his was the first house that I had ever really experienced real wood heat

where that was their main source of heat no they had baseboard electric heaters but there was he built the house with his own two hands and he bought the land and built it with his brother and they built a large basement essentially that was designed to house and maintain heat with the help of a giant, not a giant. It seems like a giant, but it was a fairly good-sized wood stove. Well, one of the things that struck me as odd was why he would go through and burn wood when the electricity was just right there. And, you know, all he had to do is flip a switch and he had heat. You know, why waste the time and energy to do that? Plus, you know, me at the time thinking that it was a, you know, kind of a pollutant,

that it was something that was archaic and something that shouldn't be done because of, you know, the obvious, you know, off-gassing or pollution or whatever that you might think. But what it really boiled down to was something totally different. and there's I guess the way that it was broken down to me was when we were out actually cutting wood and we drove out in the mountains and we wound up taking his pickup truck

and a chainsaw and we went up and it was about an hour to get out to where we were getting the wood and they wound up we wound up finding a law you know a tree that was ready to fall and I mean here's me you know some punk kid going along with somebody who knows way more than I do, who spent a lot more time in the woods and knows a lot more about these kind of things.

So I'm just kind of, you know, the dormant bystander, just kind of watching things and making, you know, whatever sense of it that I can. And we wound up following this tree and chopping it up, so we get this tree on the ground, we cut it up into rounds, and then we pack it, into the back of this pickup truck.

And we wound up getting really close to a cord of wood, and we stacked it, you know, as much as you can in an eight-foot bed to get that cord, and we used every last bit of that wood that we could. This particular tree was chamarack, and it's one of the main hardwoods that we burn, and it's one of the prized hardwoods of the Pacific Northwest, or the majority of the northwest. We don't have as much of the hardwoods as you guys in the East have,

like the hickories and oaks and things like that. Those in this region are more ornamental, and they're not as widespread, so we tend to chase down the red furs and tamaracts. But anyways, I'm getting off topic. There was something that he told me when we were out there cutting wood, and it was right after we had loaded up the back of the pickup truck,

and we were hot. It was about this time. a year. It was probably 80 degrees outside and here we are sweating, packing rounds in the back of a pickup truck. And I asked him, you know, why go through all the work and effort of getting firewood? I mean, you could just as easily just turn on the heater. Why do all this? Why take on all the extra effort? And he told me something that his father had told him. And what he said was firewood heats you three times. It heats you when you go to collect it.

It heats you when you go to chop it and stack it. And then it heats you again when you go to burn it. And when he said that, it kind of floored me a little bit. because what he was saying was that essentially firewood, even though it might seem inefficient, is actually three times as efficient as if you were to turn on your electric or gas furnace. Because you're heating yourself three times, just in the act of collecting your own firewood. And it takes work. It takes effort. It takes time. But the rewards of doing that are significantly greater.

And I think it's something that few people realize how significant that reward is. And it's not something that's tangible. It's not something that you can put a price on. It's a reward that is, how do I, how do you even put that? It's something that comes far after you actually perform the act. And it's a reward that happens when, you're cold and you go into your own wood stash and you're able to heat your home and your family because of something that you did or some sort of preparations that you made on your own accord.

So on today's show, Colin and I are going to be going over some of the things with regard to firewood and why it's essential and why it is important that you take the right precautions when it comes to knowing the essentials and some of the basics of essentially firewood, cordwood. But before we get to chopping on today's show, Colin, would you like to share your pint-size, no, not your pint-size paper project, your fun fact of the week? Yo, yo, yo, fellow listeners. I am the co-host of the Next Generation Show, Colin Buford, speaking with my father and the host of the show, Ryan.

and today we're going to be discussing how to prepare yourself for this year's upcoming winter with some nice dry firewood. Before I get too fine of that, I'd like to quickly cover the crafty call and fun fact of the week. For those of you who aren't aware of the crafty call and fun fact of the week, it's a segment on our show that gives you a fun tidbit of information of something that's usually related to the show topic. Some of you might have already known, and some of you might have had no clue. so without any further ado let's get right into it today's craft call and fun fact of the week is wood type size moisture percentage oxygen and heat are all things you want to take into consideration when collecting or keeping an eye out for firewood yep that's exactly right and that's probably the most essential thing and really the main fact of what we're going to get into today

So I'm glad you brought that up early because we'll get into those a little bit deeper, but all those things are critical when it comes to being able to provide enough heat and the right kind of heat for your family. So Volcano in chat is blowing it up with her stories about her neighbors and their firewood. And I think it's important for people to realize quantity, how much it acts. actually takes to be able to heat your home during the wintertime. And this is one consideration that on the top is the number one consideration that you need to keep in mind.

How much wood does it actually take to heat your home? Well, some resources indicate, let's see if this is a good one. I've got a couple of websites that I'm going to be sharing with. the chat room, but some of the essentials of, you know, understanding how much you need are, they're hard, okay, how do I put this? It's hard to gauge how much you actually need until you've actually lived through a winter with wood. That being said, it's important to understand how much wood it has taken you beforehand to be able to handle that. So, If the person before, like if you buy a house from someone else, it's important to know how much fire would they actually use in a winter.

And that can change. That can go up or down. So, for example, I was told for our house, it would be about, you know, four or five cords per year. So I, you know, went with that and decided that was the way to go. And I bought an efficient, a more efficient wood stove thinking that the addition of the wood stove and the, the efficiency would mean that I would be able to burn less wood, right? That's the whole point. It burns more efficient, more complete, so you get more heat, longer, that sort of thing. So I went with a little bit less firewood than I was expecting, and it wound up biting me.

I remember that first winter here on the homestead. I think I had gotten three cords thinking that, well, you know, I should be okay. But by the middle of winter, we were scrambling trying to get more. And luckily, we found someone who was selling cordwood on Craigslist, and we were able to get it fairly cheap, considering it was the middle of winter and other people were selling it at a higher price, which is something that we'll get into a little bit later on the show on how not to get burned when buying firewood. So the following year, I made sure to get more wood than I would need. So we wound up dipping into stashes from the year before to try and make sure that we had enough. And, you know, after about two or three years, we kind of got it dialed in. But then last winter hit.

And we went through two, three, four, five, almost six cords of wood. And we were burning from early October to early May. Which is odd, because that's when we got our windows put in. Yeah. So we actually made some improvements to the homestead, including some high-efficiency windows that are designed to be able to keep cold out and keep heat in during those times. But it's still an old farmhouse. There's lots of drafts, and it's just kind of one of those things.

You know, poor insulation and this and that, whatever you want to call it. So I thought it was going to make a big difference. come to find out, I still went through six cords of wood. The link that I just dropped in the chat room is a link from e-fireplace store.com. And it's simply how much wood to buy. And that link is a really good indication or general idea of how much wood you'll need. Essentially, the best way to determine how much wood you're probably going to need is, is by figuring on one chord for every 30 to 60 days or every one to two months.

So October, November, December, January, February, March, April. That's seven months. So we were burning about one cord every 30 days. Even with as efficient as the heating was, and we actually had a fairly mild winter, but the duration of winter was significantly longer than it usually is. So one of the things you want to keep in mind, when it comes to firewood, or if you intend to heat your home with firewood, it's really important to make sure you have enough set aside. So how do you do that? How do you even get started with that?

Well, let's see. Should we get into sourcing wood? Let's do sourcing wood first. Yeah, we'll do sourcing wood. So where do you go to get your wood? Well, I kind of shared a story of us, you know, going out into the woods. we had a special permit that allowed us to cut a cord of wood on national forest land. And I think we could have up to 10 cords and you pay $35 a cord if you do it yourself.

But that's a lot of work. It's a lot of time. And you have to have the tools and equipment to be able to do that. So some of the ways, if you don't have access to either a pickup truck or a trailer, to be able to haul wood or the tools are experienced to be able to do it yourself. Some of the things that you're left with

are purchasing cordwood from someone who's able to either deliver it for you or if you can go and pick it up if you have the means to do that. Sometimes you can actually reach out to arborists and when they follow trees or large limbs

if you have a place to store them they might actually just drop them off at your place if you work with them you know you sometimes they'll give you a deal sometimes they'll drop it off for free um if you have the space you can buy truck loads of firewood or dump truck loads and just have them dump it in one spot for you know one stop have it done if you buy it by the log or by the truckload board foot you can actually get, you know, maybe 15 to 20 cords on one truckload, and that might be enough for four years. Keep in mind, you're talking to semi-truckload, so it's not like something you can drop into your suburban area and just, you know, have out it in the middle of the

street. So you got to keep that in mind. If you have enough room, that's something worth considering, and that's something that we actually consider a lot. And I might actually do that this year the way that works out is if you can buy in bulk it's a good way to do that it's it's a it's ideal uh some of the things you can do uh ahead of time is purchase firewood by the cord um or you know by the truckload but you you want to make sure that you're getting what you pay for so how do you know if you get what you're paying for essentially well there's a lot of there's a lot of folks out there who might sell you a load of firewood by the truck bed or something like that. And you might think, wow, that's perfect because it's all heaped up.

It looks like it measures in the back of a pickup truck to be, you know, so-and-so-and-so-and-domensions and like this. So, well, how do you know you're getting what you're what you paid for? well there's different ways that wood can be stacked that ensure that you're getting a good deal wood that is cut into halves so let's say you for example you buy wood in rounds if you take those rounds and cut them in half you can get even more wood in the same space

the same physical dimensions if you cut those halves into split parts you can actually get even more so essentially the density of your cord wood changes based on how far down it's cut so if you follow essentially you want to make sure that your cord wood or whatever wood you're sourcing is able to meet those requirements now for those of you who don't know a cord is four feet by four feet sorry four feet by eight feet by six feet in dimensions, basically. It's 128 cubic feet. So however you measure that 128 cubic feet, that's one quart of wood.

And if you have those dimensions in rounds, then you're going to lose wood because after you cut the rounds down, then your dimensions are going to get smaller. That's right. So, and that's a key factor in making sure that when you source your wood, that you get wood that is stacked proper

Another good option for sourcing wood is like Craigslist. A lot of times you can find firewood on there and cordwood. Sometimes people will deliver it. And in general, it'll cost about $200 to $250 a cord. With those costs in mind, if you figure that you're going to be burning one cord of wood every 30 days, then that is how you gauge the value or the efficiency. of your heating system in some cases electric heat can run you three or even four hundred dollars a month come winter time but if you're able to supplement that heating source with firewood you'll actually

save 20 to 30 percent sometimes just by having firewood on hand and burning that instead of using electric heat plus it serves as a good alternative to uh heat and heating and heating your home, if the power should go out. Now, for those of you who follow me on social media, you might have seen the video and the footage that I posted on, I think I did it on, I might have put it on Twitter, maybe on Instagram, I can't remember. But we were actually snowed in for four days.

And it kind of didn't phase me. I mean, it was kind of a pain because I had to make up the time at work. but all in all, we had wood on hand, and we had food on hand, and even though we didn't have power, we had access to water. So the neighbors, on the other hand, you know, every time they lost power, they would have to try and find their way into town. In some cases, it meant hiking two miles out to the highway with their kids so that they could get picked up by a friend or family member.

so one of the things one of the hidden benefits of having firewood and storing firewood is making you know having the ability to hunker down and really keep your family warm and safe instead of you know venturing out into the cold which can be extremely dangerous so making sure you have enough on hand is critical and learning that is going to be a little bit of a curve so you want to know that ahead of time or have a little bit of extra maybe even twice as much extra and then just burn the rest next year and let's see sourcing wood obviously so we got into that storing wood so Volcano and chat shared a story about one of her friends or neighbors that's got a huge woodshed that they're expanding to get multiple years of wood and that's something that we're trying to do here by trying to make sure that you know if we get an entire truckload with 20 cords that has a potential to heat my house for three to five years depending on how bad the winters are and one of the things you can do to store large amounts of firewood is once it's cut and stacked uh you want to make sure

that it is uh open to air on all sides or as many sides as you can afford and just have a cover over the top to keep rain and snow off of it moisture essentially this cover can be as simple as a tart or you can actually build a structure. Well, no matter what you do, as long as you're able to keep the top dry, you're in good shape. So storing wood is a critical part of, you know, making sure that your firewood is actually going to be useful. So why is that? Why would wood storage is going to make any difference? Because, you know, if you can just go out and pick up a log off the ground and burn it,

what difference does it make to just leave it outside and let it set in the room? rain any ideas are you asking me yeah oh oh i mean it's not going to get wet again right so is that you're asking well like if he if it's storing if you just store it outside without any cover and it's just sitting there out in the rain it's just going to be exposed yeah pretty much and it has a likely like a very good likelihood of uh molding or rotting faster if you leave it either completely exposed or if you cover it completely so there's a fine balance where you want to make sure that you have airflow around the wood pile and that you have cover over the top of it and this is important because this is where

we get to making sure that the wood that you get is properly seasoned so what is seasoning seasoning is essentially allowing wood to remain in a dry location over a long period of time and remain dry. Over time, by doing so, it will create a better product for you in the end. The longer you can let wood sit and air out and dry out, the better it'll burn. This is because wood has a natural moisture content, even if it's dead wood, if you cut down a dead tree. And it's the same as if you were to go out into the woods and collect sticks and twigs off the ground versus getting good kindling that isn't directly on the ground to build your fire, your campfire. What happens when you have wood that's been sitting on the ground that you burn? just like Well, Kenna says in chat, it doesn't burn.

It just sits there and hisses and smoulders and pops and smokes. You know, it's just, it's really, really tough. But one of the worst things about wet wood is that it doesn't burn efficiently. When you put wet wood, wet wood into a wood stove, you will get heat, but it's going to take a lot more of it because what happens is the wood, has to burn hot enough to create steam to burn off the moisture inside the wood. So all the energy, all the heat that you're gaining from the wood is getting lost just to dry out the wood. Instead of putting the wood in the fire and allowing it to generate heat that is free from any sort of moisture.

So the longer you can let wood sit, the better. As a general rule, a good practice for storing wood long term is to, and we mentioned this on that previous episode that I mentioned before, is to take your firewood and if you cut it into at least halves and stack it for a year. And then the following season split that into whatever you want and you can't like, you know, you can usually do it into wedges or however. into smaller portions that are easily able to burn or put into your wood stove or fireplace or whatever. And these are kind of the, usually the size you want is something around like what you would see in those little bundles in a grocery store,

you know, in the front of those. But once you've let it season a year in halves and then a year in cut wedges, by then you should have wood that is more than efficient and really low in moisture content. Ideally, you'll want to have wood that is at least 14 to 10% moisture content or below. Once you start getting above 14, you know, in the 20s and 30s, 40s and even 50% moisture content, one, it's going to be nearly impossible to split.

And two, you're not going to get any of the heat benefits out of the wood. So you're pretty much wasting the wood and you're causing all sorts of, damage and smoke to the inside of your equipment, your wood stove. So seasoning your wood is critical and making sure that that wood is seasoned when you're ready to burn it and when, you know, that it's ready when you go to grab it is critical. So I guess let's, we're at the bottom of the hour. Let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll wrap up with a couple more key points on storing and producing

firewood and then we will give you just kind of a brief summary on the next pint-sized prepper project of the week so hold on everybody and we'll be right back medical readiness is an area that preppers often overlooked it's james walton host of the i am liberty show if you're looking for a trauma kit or to build one of your own visit archangel dynamics.com they have a large selection of pre-made medical kits ranging from edc pocket kits to fully stock trauma kits, along with a large selection of medical supplies, including tourniquets, pressure bandages, chest seals, and more. They offer free shipping on all orders over $99, and they also offer several firearms and medical training courses from basic to advanced. Best of all, if you enter the

coupon code prepper broadcasting coupon code, you'll get 10% off your first order. Archangel Dynamics is a combat veteran and first responder owned small business. They support us, and we want you to support them. All right, Archangel Dynamics.com. Hey, y'all. Jordan here, you're a host of a family affair. Catch us every Saturday evening at 9 p.m. Eastern as we discuss prepping on every level. And remember, everybody.

Everybody. Everybody. Everybody go low play. And we're back, ladies and we're back, ladies and gentlemen, great sponsors, great shows, great audience, thanks for joining us. We've got a couple more people in chat, so thanks for tuning in. And don't forget to keep our other shows in mind on your path toward preparedness. Live shows continue this week with James Walton over at the I.M. Liberty show on Wednesday night.

D. with a gunmetal armory on Thursday night, I don't know if that's going to be a live show because it is the 4th of July, so I guess we'll see how that rolls. And then on Friday, I hear we got D.D. we got D.A. Dave back, the NBC guy, so that'll be a good one. Good to have him back. And bringing it all home is Jay Fergie with a family affair on Saturday nights. Plus, you can catch our Sunday Reliance broadcast and Medical Mondays where we dig through the archives at Prepper Broadcasting to bring you some of the best medical tips for preppers.

We've got great shows every night this week, so don't miss out. I know that it is summertime, and it's hard to get your fill, but with, you know, with all the seasonal activities going on. But we do appreciate you supporting us and listening in, tuning in, joining us in chat. It's always a good time. So stay tuned, check those guys out on the other shows that we have here at Prepper Broadcasting. So back to it. We've been talking about firewood and some of the considerations you need to keep in mind when it comes to proper storage, you know, getting firewood, some of the tools and the equipment that you might need.

You know, how much, well, we didn't get into that part yet. but you know how much would you actually need for a season and that kind of stuff how to stack it properly what to watch out for so right before we left we were talking about wet firewood and volcano in chat mesh mentioned that uh you know they've got a log splitter and her dad would go out and collect firewood after you know a major windstorm because a lot of times you'll have deadfall or you know just fall trees that go over and that that's a good time to go out and get firewood get it for free

and when you do that you can you have an opportunity to take advantage of good wood that's already been drying potentially so one of the things you need to keep

in mind is that when you the earlier you can split wood the longer it will have like the more of an opportunity it'll have to dry out. But it's very difficult to split wood when it comes, like when it's moist, when it has a lot of moisture content. So how do you tell these things? How do you determine when wood is ready to burn, when it's ready to split, and how much moisture content you're dealing with? Well, there's a couple of tools that you can use.

Some of the essentials that we have are, you know, your basic axe or a splitting mall, a hatchet. for the rounds a sharpening tool which is generally a round disc that's used to do that or you can use a grinder with a flapper wheel on it generally that works pretty good and

you know in some cases like Volcano mentioned log splitters one of the other tools that we keep on hand and it's one of the best tools to have in your toolbox is about the size of a tick-tack box and it's just

a little moisture meter that you can get from most hardware stores for somewhere around three to eight bucks and essentially it's it's got you know an electric uh i don't know if it's a diode is the right word for it but it's got two probes on it and there are metal probes and what you do is you turn the device on and you whenever right like right when you split wood after, you know, if it's been sitting or whatever, you can split it with a hatchet or axe or whatever you got on hand. And then you put that probe directly into the firewood where you made your split. And that'll give you a good indication of what the actual moisture content is in the wood.

It'll usually read in percentages. We, Collins has been busy over the last, I don't know, three or four days, splitting and stacking wood from wood that we sourced from a tree, that had been cut down nearby and it was just cut down this year so it's too wet to burn that um the moisture content reading on that came out at 50 percent and then it actually overloaded the device so that's definitely not ready to burn even splitting it at the wood burner or you know splitting it with the wood splitter you know maybe by the end of the summer we might get it down to 20 or 30 percent but there's a pretty good chance that i won't be able to burn that this year even if i you know

if it was in a dire situation it wouldn't it would not help to be able to burn that so is there a way to tell moisture content without that moisture meter well not necessarily but what you can do is gauge the moisture by how you chop the wood or or what you observe when you're chopping wood so So when you have a round that's ready to be split, you'll notice that... I can usually tell. What? Yeah, how do you tell? Oh.

Well, there's a mixed bit of trees that have been splitting around out in the pile of wood that I've been splitting. And the more dry stuff usually is lighter because it has less moisture in it. But when you actually split it, it doesn't splinter. or um it does it's not it doesn't take anything to split hardly um i could probably do it without the log splitter but you can tell it's usually it's pretty light it's not like physically it looks light not so much like you know usually you can tell just by looking at it sometimes um but more wet wood it's heavier and when you split it, it won't split easily. Right.

And what Colin's saying is critical. I mean, when you go to split wood, if you have a round and you look down at it, you'll see something very specific. And you'll see the rings, you know, the concentric rings that start from the center and work their way outward, right? Well, as wood dries, it'll start to form a split that goes from one edge to the center. and one of the best ways to tell if wood is ready to burn or if it's close to being ready to burn, generally after about a year of being seasoned and around, if you take your axe or your splitting mall from the opposite side of that crack that's formed and try and split that wood with one hit, then it's usually good to burn

or it's at least usually good to split and get ready for seasoning for the year. but it's important that you do that now you know you don't want to be wait until middle of winter to be splitting your rounds because even though there's that slight you know fissure that's formed it's not going to be around the whole you know round so you have to make sure that you actually split that wood early and often to make sure that it's has enough time to dry out but real wet stuff you can even tell just when splitting it if a lot if you're using a log splitter it's usually not so fast like it is with an axe but when you use the log splitter on the wood

sometimes you can see the actual moisture like seeping out around the axe head so a general indication and if you ever want to try this with someone who comes to your campfire and thinks he's the king of the walk give him a round of wood that is fairly green

and make sure that you you have a round of wood that's dry and seasoned and you can go head to head with them and they'll chop and chop and they will not be able to split that round of wood and you'll be able to just smoke right through it and the difference is the moisture content and you can tell if wood is really wet partially by the sound so if you throw the axe or the splitting them all down and it makes us just a thud sound it's not going to it's not ready to go. It's not ready to be split yet. Usually, when it's ready, it'll make a clear pop and it'll split right down the middle,

or right toward the center of the wood. So, you know, sometimes the sound is a good indication. The weight is a good indication. And, you know, if you have a moisture meter, that's an even better indication. Because you can really get it down to that moisture rating that you want before you're ready to burn. So, wow. Spent a lot of time talking about moisture meaning. But that's pretty critical.

Kind of like Colin mentioned on the initial fact is that that moisture content is essential when it comes to making sure that that wood is efficient and it's going to actually heat your home. And the reason for that, I want to spend a little bit time on that is because for a lot of folks, you know, you think you can go out and split a cord of wood or, you know, drop a tree, put it in rounds, and start burning it. when you go to your bugout location or your cabin in the woods and it ain't going to do anything for you. It's just going to sit there and burn and smolder and it's not going to heat you up like it's supposed to.

You have to make sure that that stuff has been seasoned a long time before you get out there and start to burn it. So what kind of wood do you burn? Well, there are several types of wood and different densities of wood that make a big difference. So here in the northwest, like I, mentioned before we focus on tamarack because it's readily available and it's a relatively hard wood that puts out a lot of heat so i've got a link another link that i'm going to drop into the chat

that is from woodheat dot org and the website is good dash firewood dot html and it has a pretty solid list let me get back to the chat so i can drop this in real quick just one moment Oh, there you go. You guys have it now. So, let me get back to it. So some of the hardest density wood that's the longest burning and generally puts out the hottest, uh, um, or the most B2s per, you know, per cubic foot or cubic yard or however you want to measure it are ironwood, rock elm, hickory, oak, obviously, sugar maple, beach, yellow birch,

ash, red elm, red maple, tamarack, Douglas fir, white birch, Manitoba maple, red alder, hemlock, poplar, pine, basswood, spruce, and balsam. And each of these have different densities, and there's different places that you can go online to actually get great graphs that indicate not only the density, but the burn ratios and the actual BTUs put out per cord. And if you want to get really down to the nitty-gritty, that's kind of where you can start. Some of the prices, you know, are going to vary. So like, for example, a cord of red fur might be, you know, $175, where a cord of Tamarack might be $225. And that $50 difference is made up in the quality of heat that you get out of that wood.

So there's a reason. the price difference there. It's not just because somebody's trying to make a buck. It's because someone who knows enough about the firewood that they're selling is selling it because it will last longer and it will burn hotter. So it's important to understand and know which trees are going to be best for you and for your home and which trees are accessible to you wherever you live. So I'd love to get hickory because that stuff burns great. and it'll burn for a long time and I'm really kind of surprised

because it puts out a lot of heat but it just doesn't I mean unless I want to go cut up a bunch of furniture it doesn't do a whole lot of good for me to be able to do that and how about ironwood what is what is the story like have you ever

I've never I don't know where to get ironwood I don't imagine that I don't even know what part of the country that would be from but it might be something up in Canada or maybe down to the southwest. I don't know.

Unless someone in chat might know where Ironwood's from. What kind of rake it has with the rest of them. But anyways, so there's kind of a general rundown of the types of wood that you want to burn. Some of the stuff you don't want to burn is anything, if you pick it up

and it's really, really light, generally it's not going to be a good quality bird. or it's going to burn really hot, really fast, and it's not going to put out the lasting heat that you want from something like a dense hardwood. Some of your white pines and stuff like that, it's not going to be nearly as good as, you know, red fur, for example.

So knowing the different tree types is pretty important. If it's real light, too, could mean that wood's rotting or... Yep. That's a good point. You might have good wood or wood that might be a tamaract, or red fur and if you pick it up and it's really light you split it and then it just kind of crumbles from the inside because it's rotting um you know it and there's nothing you can do about that you know it just that's just the way it is sometimes when you find that wood so it's that's why it's good to understand what you're burning and where and you know what where you're getting it from no

know what it is so uh let's see what else what else do you want to try and get anything else here before we run it out to the top of the hour. Probably should leave time for the Pinetside Pepper Project. Yeah, okay. So, let's take a few minutes, and, you know, there's a lot more that we could talk about firewood and, you know, the importance of getting it in

split right now. So, you know, I know it's, we're here we are getting ready to launch off a bunch of fireworks and it's a middle of summer and nobody wants to think about this, but right now is the time to get firewood before it gets to be

to where you can't get firewood. And, you know, take those opportunities now because if you can get it cut down into rounds and split, sometimes if it's already dry enough, you can get it to where you might be able to burn it in a pinch this year. But if nothing else, the longer you have it set in, you know, to dry out, the better off you'll be.

Oh, and it looks like, yep, ironwood can be found in the Sonoran Desert of Mexico, Arizona, and California So with that Let's spend a little bit of time Talking about the pint-sized pepper project of the week So with firewood in mind We thought we would dig into bushcraft a little bit

And talk about some of the things that you could do with firewood Other than just burn it So Colin, do you want to spend a few minutes Talking about You know Some of the bushcraft things that you can do with Your wood rounds, I guess Sure

So, from what I've seen in my travels, browsing through Instagram and social media and just anywhere on the internet or in magazines, things like that, as far as Bushcraft goes, there's a lot of interesting things you can do with firewood or any type of wood, really. some of them include like cutlery and things like that you know I've seen pretty cool spoons and mugs yeah there's a guy at the farmer's market that makes some really cool spoons and cutlery out of firewood bowls and stuff yeah I mean people can get real into detail as far as etching and things like that goes right into the the wood that you might be carving

but there are bowls and just things that you might need in general like say if you're using an actual cast iron pot or pan and you don't have anything to pick it up with you can use like you can you can make your own tongs or yeah yeah or even like a little sleeve so the pint science project today is a little bit looser but one of the things that we wanted to at least expose and we'll probably do one of these here in the future is you can actually use wood to form things that you wouldn't normally think that they could be used for, things like tree taps.

Essentially you can take a small round of wood, carve it into a cone-shaped part on one end, drill a hole through it and then you can use it as a tap in a tree and you can actually tap the maple right out of the tree using nothing but a piece of wood and your

options are pretty much limitless and it's just something that we wanted to share with the listeners as an option of something that you can do other than just burn it by taking the time to go out and actually carve something out of the wood that you're

collecting and you'll find a lot of the properties of that wood by working with it so some of the skills that are developed and encouraged through this is you know are generally you know safe handling of knives like whittling and cutting the importance of understanding the moisture content of wood and how and the properties of wood like the density and stuff like that and also some of the creativity that comes along with this you know sometimes if you can take a stick and turn it into something you do have the potential to actually make money off of it if you want if you want to go that route you know take take the entrepreneurial side or you could survive off of it by making some sort of cooking utensil or or something like that so it's kind of hard to do one project on that large of a scale but we'll make sure that we get some photos up on instagram of this one over the weekend and share it with you out there so i want to make a stick out of wood make a stick, like a, like a, just a stick. A beating stick, an ugly stick.

Yeah. Nice. Like a shisher. Yeah. So I think with that, for the final takeaway today, I think it's important that if you are considering the potential of bugging out or having a bug out location or having a cabin in the woods that you're going to retreat to, it's critical that you keep in mind how you enjoy. intend to heat yourself through the winter and what kind of steps that you've taken in advance to be able to do this some of you might be able to just make sure that you have stockpiled wood on hand or you know a little bit of extra stashed away somewhere or have a source somewhere but

it's a good idea to make sure that not only do you have a backup for that resource that you have a skill set and knowledge to be able to back up your backup have you ever split wood before. Have you ever run a chainsaw? I mean, that alone will eliminate about 40 to 50% of the people who actually need firewood. If you've never run a chainsaw or if you've never sharpened an axe, you'll be struggling from day one. Plus, you'll be putting yourself at risk for injury. So when it comes to firewood, it's critical to keep in mind some of these essential key factors and make sure that you consider these things not only just as passing thoughts, but that you make them, you know, put them at the forefront of your survival

when it comes to, you know, being able to get by on nothing more than the firewood and the stores that you have. It's hard to imagine that a cord of wood, which is 128 cubic feet, it's going to get burned up in a single month. But it is. And it's hard to visualize that. There's no way that you'll be able to access that much firewood if you intend to burn your own furniture, your own fence posts, your own doors.

It'll only get you so far. So it's critical that you make sure you have extra stores on hand and you take the time now to develop those resources, develop those skills, and make sure that you have a thorough understanding of what's good to burn and what isn't before you start setting out. So with that, lastly, in case you missed it, on last week's show, we did a special on late season planting

where we kind of gave our humble advice on what you can do to get ready for a second planting, and make sure that you have a harvest for early October or earlier later October I guess this fall and you know remember if you missed any of our old shows you can always check out

the previous episodes on the show page or on your favorite streaming service so while you're there be sure to leave us a five-star review it does help to boost our presence and it allows us to share this message with others next week we are probably

going to be doing a pre-recorded show because we're going to be we're going to be MIA for next week for some family events and we're going to be taking that and turning it into a show sort of. So we're probably

going to be doing a show on vacation preparedness or travel ready preparedness because we're actually going to be heading to the Oregon coast which for those of you who are paying attention to some of the stuff on the news is going to be a little hairy or could be hairy.

depending on the way Antifa ramps up their activities in the Portland area. So stay tuned. We will keep you updated and hopefully we'll be able to get you a pre-recorded show and make sure that you guys still have at least something to listen to while we're out. That's it for today, everyone.

We thank you for joining us on the next generation show and don't forget to tune in next time where we explore another aspect of the little things in life that make all the difference in the world. This is your host, Ryan Buford, and your co-host, Colin Buford, reminding you to stay informed, get involved, and be prepared. Have a great night, everybody, and make it a great week. Thank you for listening to the Prepper Broadcasting Network, where we promote self-reliance and independence. Tune in tomorrow for another great show and visit us at Prepper Broadcasting.com.

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