Softwood

You’ve likely heard that thing about using the internet to self-diagnose an ailment from which you might be suffering. You’ll find an answer alright, but it will be the worst-case scenario. You have something unpronounceable and cured only by drinking castor oil and eating lots of liver.

Unfortunately, a similar strain of bad news awaits if you search to find what you should and shouldn’t burn in your trusty woodstove. The “interweb” is going to tell you that burning softwood is bad. As the story goes, when you drill down (maybe up in this case), softwoods produce a lot of smoke and chimney-clogging creosote. Also, log per log, softwoods produce fewer BTUs than hardwoods.

Here’s the thing. All needle-bearing conifers are softwoods. This includes the pines, firs, and cedars out West where I live. I could accurately write that this effectively includes pretty much everything available in my region of the Rocky Mountains.

We don’t have oaks and walnuts proliferating at our back door. We’ve planted ourselves amongst the pines and firs and must make do. In fact, I spent considerable time this spring and summer cutting and chopping a reserve supply of lodgepole pine and fir for my stove.

Those of us who have not known better have been successfully burning softwoods for hundreds of years. A little damper control. A finely marbled steak. A well-aged single malt Scotch. And a stack of split pine. That’s all we need to laze through winter.

My Softwood Reserve for the Coming Winter

—Mitchell Hegman