Warming Units of Trees

Heating with wood changes the way I look at trees. Ask me how big a tree is, and I’ll tell you it’s a one-day tree, a one-week tree, or the very rare, two-week tree. I know how many logs it takes to heat our home on a January day. When I look at a tree, I see its height and divide it into 19-inch sections, the length needed to fit in our wood-burning stove. I wrap my hands, and sometimes arms, around its circumference, and estimate how many times we'll have to split the logs. Yesterday, we cut wood: three one-day trees, a four-day one and a one-week one.