Wood, heat, and a tight house
The oak-hickory ridges are a furnace if you cut them early and burn them dry.
What to cut
| Wood | Notes |
|---|---|
| Shagbark hickory | Hottest common firewood here. Worth the splitting. |
| White & red oak | The winter backbone. Season 12–18 months. |
| Black locust | If you have it: fence posts and fire. |
| Sugar maple | Excellent. Ash too, if emerald ash borer left you any dry standing. |
| Black walnut | Burns fine; the timber may be worth more than the BTUs if the world still buys lumber. |
| Sycamore, boxelder, cottonwood | Poor. Use for shoulder-season or to start the oak. |
| Eastern redcedar | Kindling and fence posts. Creosote if you burn it green in a stove. |
Note. A full cord is 4×4×8 ft of stacked wood, not a pickup heap. A tight small house in a Dillsboro winter wants several cords of dry hardwood. Start the pile in February for the following winter.
Don’t burn the house
A gasoline generator in a closed garage is a way to wipe out a family. Outdoors, downwind, dry, and away from intakes.
Dry wood, a clean chimney, a metal pad, and a bucket of sand. Creosote fires start in January from a smoldering wet-wood overnight burn. Build a hot fire daily to run the stack clean.
CO kills quietly. If you still have a detector, use it. If you don’t: never charcoal indoors, never a generator in the garage, crack a window when the stove is buttoned up tight on a still night.
The house itself
Heat one room. Close doors. Hang blankets. South windows are free heat on a January day — open curtains at dawn, close them at 3. Stuff the west wind. Sleep in the warm room.
Know the flood line. Laughery and the Ohio come up. Keep seed, tools, and the medicine box above the highest water stain in the cellar.