Met History wrote:

> "Most such places [dry ledges, often at ridgetop, where very little
> soil remained] were used as farm wood lots, where pine was culled for
> timber, chestnut for fence rails, hemlock for bark, sugar maples for
> sap, and much of what remained for firewood, avoiding resinous soft
> woods and elm.   A good size farmhouse in New England burned up to
> thirty-five cords of wood per year."
>
> What's wrong with elm?     Christopher

Elm?
What is wrong with elm?
Harder than petrified shit to split. Dulls the saw.

One time I got snookered into cutting down an old elm by a German from
Brooklyn who should have staid in Brooklyn instead of transplanting
himself upstate to Moravia. We had been building a fireplace for him and
he had this idea that the old elm on the north of his acreage leaning
out over the road would make good firewood. My mason mentor Marshal
Pruitt was always volunteering me for new adventures, and he volunteered
me to cut the tree down with a payment in firewood. So on a Saturday
morning I climbed up in the notch and began cutting through 24 inches of
wood with a 15 inch Homelite blade. That was damned work, and shortly I
realized I was a damned fool. Crazy to be up in a notch cutting an old
elm. This is how trees kick back and kill idiots. It was a good thing we
drank a lot in those days. I got it cut, and landed, across the county
road. Went at the other side of the notch, landed, again across the
road. Lots of dead punky wood broke up but also some good solid mass. I
cut up a few loads of the solid wood and took it all home. Left the
remainder laying in the road and never went back. Took us like two
months before we gave up on splitting elm. Cheap it may have been, but
one hell of a lot of work. Like they say, cut wood warms twice, once in
cutting & splitting and once in the fire. Elm must warm three times as
much. I prefer black locust... though some guy in Iowa a year ago cursed
me out for saying that. High btu's per cord and splits like an ice
chilled radish.  I met the German one afternoon in town some months
after dropping his nuisance tree and he was pissed. I don't know why, he
got free wood too.

I was beginning to lose it with my faith in Marshal the day he talked me
into ripping down the side of a house trailer with the chain saw so we
could put in a fireplace. Aluminum chips are different than wood chips.

][<en

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