I have a friend, Jenny, and whenever something she preplanned helps her later, she tends to say, "thank you past Jenny!"

Tonight, it's 0 degrees farenheit outside, there's lots of snow on the ground and my main wood stack usually is way over THERE under a tarp and lots of snow. But 8 weeks ago, my wife and i moved a huge stack of firewood just outside the basement door. For when it was too darn cold and snowy to get to the main pile. Hooray for planning, right?

Well thats not really the thing I'm thanking past me for, its for the fact that I decided two years ago to cut my wood for this year to 26" lengths for my 28" firebox AND to NOT split them as small. Its much heavier and more cumbersome to manage but now i get a solid 8 hour burn and have a great hot bed of coals in the morning.

Next winter: The wood I chopped all this year is a zillion times better. We stop burning ash trees. Hickory, oak, cherry, walnut or Maple. That's it. Ash burns too fast and isn't worth the effort. We also tossed a little birch and tulip poplar in there this year, not good at all, goes up like tinder, just end up feeding the stove more.

I had a 24" firebox on the stove in my first house, so I cut my wood 20" long, less work and handling I figured, no problem. Then I replaced my wood stove with a much more efficent one, and had to cut 4" off of 10 face cords of wood! Like a reverse Thank You, Past Me. Mike