True. You only need to survive long enough to be able to pass your genes to the next generation.
However, somehow people from here, the Nordic countries, have developed a gene that southern Europeans lack. It makes us handle milk better. With long winters milk has always been an important part of our diet. Maybe farthing a lot reduced our chances to get laid and made us milk tolerant in a thousand years or so 
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I can’t resist mentioning my friend Tim in Kenya who is Massai. He raves about their favorite drink of blood mixed in milk. Makes me gag just thinking about it. But you better believe I would be gulping it down if nothing else was available.
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There was a pudding made from milking a “fresh” cow my grandfather liked the idea is to get the first milking with blood and all the other stuff that makes the milk yellow. I though it was alway better to feed that milk to the calves… plenty of good clean white milk to drink I was never that hungry. I view GMO and alot of other stuff the same way if there is something better I can grow or raise and eat I will do that.
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Nature always finds a way! 
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Just trying to find an excuse to get this topic back on track.
This is a piece of Birch. The top part of the tree was rotting and the bottom was good firewood. Somewhere between the two areas was wood like this. It may be hard to see in this picture but between the soft and good and spongy wood is a milky white rubbery substance. Has anyone seen this before? Any explanations for what I’m seeing here?
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Bill, that’s moldering. That slime starts to develope between the fibres only weeks after felling or when a tree dies. That’s why wood dries so much faster if the cutting/splitting/stacking is done right after felling.
However, subzero temps somewhat stops this process, why the most convinient way is to harvest before snow and cut/split/stack early spring when humidity is low.
The oldtimers around here say you should harvest firewood in the months that ends with “-ber” (September-December) and split when the snow melts. Result of empirical studies
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I read a surprising article from the by gone days and it said to cut the tree in the summertime when the leaves are on it. Do not limb it until the leaves die off. Only then cut up into fire wood. He claimed that the tree would keep the leaves and small limb alive as long as possible by wicking as much sap to them leaving the trunk wood as dry as possible before bucking.
I have no idea if that is true ? ? ? ? ? 
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Still done here by some in my village actually. It works. That’s one way of doing it if you’re late felling (if the sap has already started to rise). However, taking advantage of spring time low humidity for drying is the best, in my opinion.
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Oh yes always done with spruce here. For firewood we usualy fall trees after 15th august till the leafs start to fall.
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Interesting point with the spruce. Those trees never loose their leaves so it would really help. My uncle who went to college for forestry back in the early 70s told me as a kid the best system is to cut in the fall after all the leaves are off hardwood cut to stove lenght and let sit till spring split in the spring for best drying and burn the following winter. If you have to cut while the leaves are on because you didn’t get your wood during the fall and winter by all means wait for the leaves to die draining as much as it can from the tree but that was considered the second choice. Probably largely because you end up with less drying time anyway by not cutting months earlier.
My grandfather would always say wood drys in the spring. I remember splitting all the wood in the fall as a kid because I has the time before leaving the farm for school and home about 80 miles away and my grandfather telling me well its good you got that all split but it won’t dry till spring anyway wood drys in the spring. Always made me think we’ll I am glad I just spent all that time splitting wood that won’t dry. Lol
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Old Wisdom’s, are wise, practical wisdom’s.
bear-in-mind though that old wisdom’s evolved are geographically/regionally “wise”.
Example: here in the wetside PNW fir forests you cut down fir fuel wood trees in later winter/very early Spring BEFORE sunwarming sap rises. Leave limb/needles on to dry through May/June. Then sweat out the limbing, bucking, spitting, sun/air dry single row rick stacking for July 5th and after final drying. Again hustle/sweat it into the wood shed late August to beat the September rains.
Wise-way: ~35% moisture before saps up falling → lose m-a-y-b-e 5% limbs/needles sucked out → then split and single row ricked up it will drop it from 30% to 20%, even as low as 8% depending on the late July/August conditions.
Tree falling after sap-up here then you are starting at 40-45% moisture. Limb/split/stack out in nice cool early May; and June rains will actually increase you many years to 50%. Just not enough heat/drying days left in that season to get it below 25-30% moisture then.
Leave out for next season through the whole Sept-June raining period and it soaks up to 60% moisture by that following years drying down short window. Putting you into an even deeper wet wood hole to fight out of.
So use the right wood-wisdom for your area, and species!!
State of Virginia wood-sweaters insisted to me their need to after full leaf off; to then mid-winter tree fell, cut and split as the only way. Why?, I asked.
Easier to swing move around the branches when out of leaf.
Snakes dormant then. They do have 2-3 woods poisonous snakes.
Also they as actual farmers say this is thier other-works-needed slowest time of the year.
tree-farmer Steve unruh
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Thinks for posting that STeve.
here in Mo our wood drys in the winter time as good as it does on the summer.
the reason for that is at night lt gets well below freezing the moisture in the wood forms frost. Our days gets warm and the frost evaporates. As this cycle keeps repeated it slowly sucks the moisture out.
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SOUNDS REASONABLE. maybe a good thing to try Jeff.
But firewood making seems to be a much more complicated subject in ya’ll’s parts of the world. Here we just cut it when we cut it and stack it how we stack it and burn it when we need it and it all works out just fine…Maybe our lack of extreme winters has some effect on all that.
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We never have the luxury of planning when to cut firewood. Never noticed a difference or maybe not smart enough to notice or don’t have the time. If the wood is green we use the ash first then the cherry next. And stack some wood in the boiler room, so kiln action. Most of the time other stuff takes priority and the wood pile ends up at the bottom of the list.
Edit: standing dead pine burns first. That stuff can be the driest. A few are the wettest.
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I try to keep bc a few years worth laying around. I know it’s dry once the bark falls off. Time to find another source. The vener plant is closing down and only 3 or 4 years supply. Time to tighten up the home and shop and start advertising tree work. It’s way easier to find the time if you get paid to do it.
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Not having to plan when to cut firewood would be luxury to us. However, it’s not rocket sience. It’s as simple as I don’t try to put my carrot seeds down when the ground is 3 feet frozen. Hay bussines, same thing. You cut hay ones a year, that’s it. If you don’t cut and get a week of sunshine in July you’re screwed. I think the further north you are the narrower the window for everything.
When the snowstorms starts roaring and the mercury shrinks it’s like money in the bank knowing you have the shed closed up and packed with bone dry wood that will last you until April. Then it’s time to crawl out of the bear pit and start splitting next winter’s firewood.
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Yup farming is definitely a case of doing the job at the right time or you get nothing back for your efforts. There is nothing worse then sitting next to a wood stove when it is way below freezing and hoping your wood is dry enough to make a little heat. One winter of that will convince anyone to either get dry wood or pay for different heat. But wood alone always amazes me people put it off to the last minute. But it doesn’t lessen the amount of work you have to do and if it isn’t dry you waste all that work on a poorer quality product.
Oh well i need to go work on something productive myself maybe some more garden harvesting or wood splitting for winter… always too much work to do and too little time to do it all.
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Interesting comments and wisdom from all. There will be different most efficient apptoaches depending on area, routine, and climate.
I can add a few regional observations. Here we have very strong summer drying conditions (usually). (2 cuts of hay, maybe 3 if you push it) And an extreme seasonal variation in climate. There are definitely best times to do different work.
Cutting wood when leaves are on the trees would be considered desperate due to some lack of organization, or as part of a logging operation. Why? Reduced drying time, early spring is frequently dry, and no shade from trees. Sweat, mosquitos, and if so blessed, black flies, deer flies, wasps, hornets or woodticks. No bugs in the late fall and winter, and low risk of sweating overly. Poison ivy drops it’s leaves. Assessment of snags, visibility and mobility in the bush is greatly aided when things aren’t obscured with foliage. Brush will weigh less without leaves. Arguably less environmental harm when the bush is dormant, no nesting birds, critters or active insects.
In my observation wood splits far more easily when frozen hard.
The timing to cut in fall and winter, split and pile before snow melts dovetails nicely with the general routine of work, and serves as good exercise in a time of year when people tend to be most inactive, and the day length has increased appreciably.
Regards,
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This year, no time for planting carrots. No time for real garden. The seasons is one of the reasons I crossed switch grass off the list. I have to plan in advance a weeks vacation from work and most of the time the weather would not work out for harvesting. But wood works anytime of the year. It is wonderful stuff ! ! I never met a logger that stopped working if he started to sweat. I even think sweating is healthy. Nor would bugs slow them down. But we do not have those swarms of black bugs that Canada has. Almost no bug this summer. No poisonous snakes, I love it here… So one year work has you working 7 day a week, 10 hours a day, one year medical issues, some kind of major repair or helping someone else. The nice thing is that you can work with wood. Start with the wood from last year, pop corn dry dead standing stems, kiln dry the wetter stuff. Some species are rather dry around these parts. Never had a problem burning wood if you work with it. Maybe it has something to do with ones location.
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I forgot to mention that green ash is dry enough to burn straight away when the sap isn’t running, but it’s still a significant loss of heat if not dried properly. Black ash is wetter. By the sounds of the emerald ash borer progress, all the ash will soon be nothing but legend, like butternut elm and horse chestnut. The borer hasn’t arrived in Manitoba yet, but a rumour reports it in Winnipeg, it will be a matter of some years before the resource is devastated.
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