Quest for Fire...Wood

The task of buying firewood fills me with suspicion, frustration ... and pleasure. The men (and occasionally women) who cut, split, age, and haul the stuff around are a breed apart, only one step lower, perhaps, on the ladder of atavistic trades, than the men who apply hot asphalt to warehouse roofs in the summertime. Yet I feel that I’ve got a lot in common with them. I love the woods, I love the trees, I’ve cut plenty of wood myself (by hand) in my time, and feel an almost Hamsum-esque attachment to individuals trees and pieces of wood.

I want to know where the wood came from. But I also want to get a good deal. Firewood is no longer cheap.

I got a call from “Sheila” of the hoarse smoker’s voice the other day. “We sold you some wood last year,” she said. “How’s it holding out?”

“I’m doing fine,” I relied. “But thanks for calling.” What I had it in mind to say was, “Actually, I’m almost out, because the “oak” you sold us last year was half cottonwood.”

But it was true. I was running out. I called a few numbers, including a guy in Stillwater that I spotted on Craig’s list. “Golden Valley? That’s too far.”

I called a number in Golden Valley for Ron’s Tree Service and left a message. I called another number, it sounded good, but the woman told me she was out on the road. She’d call me back later, she said.

But Ron called me first. Not Ron, maybe his wife. A pleasant, articulate woman, at any rate. I'd made a few more calls by that time and had no recollection of who or what "Ron’s" was, so I asked, “Where are you located?”

“We’re in St. Cloud,” she said.

“Where do you get the wood?”

“My husband buys it standing. We hire loggers to cut it and bring it in to the woodlot. We’ve got a big barn where we store some of it. We age it and send trucks down to deliver it in the Cities every day.”

The price she quoted was 20% more than I’m used to paying. Then again, it was only half of what Paul’s Fireplace Wood in Little Falls quoted me. And a little voice in the back of my head kept saying, “Maybe you wouldn't have so much trouble buying wood if you weren't so cheap. You get what you pay for.”

The truck that showed up Tuesday morning was bigger than any wood-hauling truck I’d ever seen, and it was full to the brim from front to back. Clearly I was the first stop. The smell of ammonia was in the air—a smell I associate with green oak—but the wood itself had that seasoned gray look, and it was expertly split into moderate-sized quarters.

Meanwhile, the two guys unloading it alleviated any disappointment I was feeling at the hitherto bourgeois nature of the deal. As usual, one of the unloaders was just a kid, while the other was a seasoned pro. “I’m actually a tree-trimmer,” he told me with obvious pride. “I could bring down a cottonwood single-handed, though it’s better to have someone around to hold the ropes…in case something goes wrong. They’re paying me a lot of money to do this.”

As he tossed the wood down into the rubberized wheel-barrel, he said, “Look at that. This stuff is dry. There’s a layer of dust on it. Look at that bark fly off when it hits the wheel barrel. Ron is one of a dying breed. The production firewood operations have all the machines, but their wood doesn’t look like this.”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘production’ operation,” I queried.

Here the lad broke in. “You can get a unit. I think it costs $250,000. One guy sits there with a crane, brings in a log, then the machine cuts it. He sets up the pieces, also remotely, and the machine splits them. But half the time they don’t line up right. Whatever comes out, that’s what you get.”

“Surely Ron uses a splitting machine, too,” I exclaimed, glancing at the load of wood in the back of the truck.

“Yeah,” the old pro replied. “But you load it by hand. And it runs by centrifugal force, not by hydraulics. Man is it fast. You release that handle and pow!”

I was trying to imagine where the centrifugal force might possibly come from, and why it would be better than hydraulic force. I suppose the “pow” is the sound of the splitting wood. Both of these men had a peculiar gleam in their eye as they described the process, as if they’d just emerged from a carnival stripper’s tent. It must be some amazing machine. Pow!

The old pro gave me Ron’s card as they were leaving. Also a refrigerator magnet, which seemed a little much. How often does anyone order firewood, after all?

“He has 1,500 people on his list,” he said as he climbed back into the truck. “He delivers to them every year ... It’s a business. But with a three-year aging process, it’s a big investment, and it’s tough to anticipate the market... When things slow down, he sells some of it to his brother.”