A Conversation with Ryan Trapani of the Catskill Forest Association

with Heather Phelps-Lipton

Where does most firewood in the Catskills come from?

RT — Most of it comes from “cull trees.” Cull trees are cut to improve the growing conditions for better trees and they often become firewood.

Are they most often sourced from private or public properties?

RT — All private, especially in the Catskills. The majority of our government land around here is State Forest Preserve.

And that means preserved, preserved, like no-...

RT — No cutting. No anything.  Almost all firewood is from private land, or it's from tree work. Lately, there’s an abundance of ash trees in people's firewood piles —  I have 85% ash in my firewood pile.

Is that because of the Emerald Ash borer?

RT — Yes. When I do tree work for people, it’s usually an ash that's dying or dead, and I’m left with an ash that they don't want. We get a lot of firewood from it.

From how far away does most people's firewood come from?

RT — Within 50 miles and most likely, within 25 miles, because it's not cost effective to move wood too far. It’s heavy and big.

What is considered seasoned wood, and how do you recognize it?

RT — 20% moisture content is the technical definition of seasoned wood, but most people don't have moisture readers (not that they're expensive or anything).You can tell by the ends, they're a little cracked, and the sound they make when they clink on each other. 

Different wood species require various lengths of time to season properly. Ash and red maple,are going to take one season to season whereas red oak, sugar maple and denser woods, like black locust, take two years, and that's when they’re covered and stacked.

A firewood “season” is an entire calendar year

RT — Wood doesn’t dry when it’s in four-foot lengths. Logs will only dry at the end. They'll dry a little bit when you put them in the 16- or 18-inch rounds, but they really only lose their moisture when they're split, and they best dry when they're split and covered, and not on the ground.

Do you warm your house with wood?

RT — Yes. And I like to get three years ahead, so I'm cutting for three years from now.

How many cords do you go through in a year?

RT — Maybe three to four. I also do it for sugaring, and that's called sap wood, which is different than firewood. For sap wood you only use trees that are really light, that burn hot and fast, like aspen,sassafras,white pine, or hemlock. That's a different pile.

A perfect segue! Do particular sorts of trees have more heat than others?

RT — Absolutely.  Here in the Catskills, we have a great variety. In Alaska, where it's awfully cold, they only have balsam fir or spruce, for example, and that's really light and not very dense, so it doesn't have as many BTUs. But here we have everything from the densest like apple and black locust, to sugar maple, which is somewhat in the high-medium range, to ash and red maple in medium. We wouldn't even touch sycamore or aspen. 

You wouldn't touch it because you feel like it doesn't have any energy?

RT — Because we have so much to choose from.  Why cut down aspen for firewood when you can cut down black birch, or black cherry?

Is there a lot of black cherry around?

RT — Yeah, it grows up in the old abandoned fields that were farms like 60 years ago. Black cherry will still be there now unless it gets shaded out by other trees over time. 

Holzhausen

A method of stacking cut and split firewood using a built-up circle that turns into a beehive-like shape

Any recommendations for people making fires?

RT — You have to have dry wood. If you don't burn dry wood you're burning twice as much wood or you're paying twice for your wood. My father used to burn green wood, eight cords a year, when he lived in New Paltz, then when he got dry wood it was four and a half cords.

But then, how you burn also really matters.  The wood should be all charred in the stove, and in full flame, before it’s damped down. If you see that wave of fire on top you did it right because that's unburned gas being burned and that's what they're there for. It's called pyrolysis, and it's like burning unburned gas. That's what wood gas fires do. But if you damp it down too soon there's a lot of vapor in there, and it's going in your chimney, and you're losing heat through vapor. 

A lot of people don't get the wood hot enough, before they damp down if you damp down too soon, because you're in a rush, or whatever, you want to go to bed ... but you’ve got to get it hot. The best thing to do is damp down in stages, not just damp down all the way, but sometimes you have to, right?

But damp down a little bit to damp down and then you get that rolling flame on top. That's when you're getting the most heat out of your wood.

What do you think about the theory of leaving the flue open all the time? Can you get more heat that way?

RT — No, you're wasting it. Now it's just going up the chimney and if you have a newer stove you are going to over fire. They're very efficient and you can ruin your stove. You'll get away with it if you have steel because steel tends to expand more, but if you have cast iron, you will crack it.  Especially if you have dry wood.

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From Catskills Magazine 2020 Issue 1
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