It's September now, and we've had a solid week of autumnal weather: cool, and alternating between pleasantly dry and solid days of rain. Temperatures the past week have been right around seasonal--which these days means "slightly on the cool side."

The pile of firewood is gone from the driveway, split and stacked in various places around the garage and yard for the winter. My firewood inventory is something like this:

Garage: Approx. 2 cords of dry cottonwood, and approx. 3 cords of dry oak.

Under the Spruce Tree: Approx. 2-3 cords of dry oak and ash, and approx. 2 cords of pine, birch, and a bit of apple.

Under a Different Spruce Tree: Approx. 1/2 cord of boxelder, not yet split, but reasonably dry.

Near the Pond: Approx. 1/2 cord of greenish boxelder, not yet split.

So, total it all up, and there's something like ten cords of dry firewood, about half of which is heavy dense wood (oak, ash, and apple), and half of which is lighter wood (cottonwood and pine). There's another cord not yet split and not as dry, which is boxelder, a moderately dense wood.

The light woods burn fast and hot, and so are good for early in the season when we don't need the stove going 24/7. They're good for taking a bit of chill out of the house, or those times when someone is around to feed the stove constantly.

The heavy woods have a lot more (2-3x) heat value per volume, so those are good for times like overnight or when nobody's home when the weather is very cold and we want to keep the stove going as much as possible around the clock. The stove loaded with oak will put out a lot of heat for hours.

I don't know if this will be enough for the winter, but we're certainly in a lot better shape firewood-wise than at the beginning of last winter.

In addition, there are some other firewood stocks I can draw upon:

* There's still a little bit of old, rotten logs by the pond. Last fall I couldn't get them out, but after a dry summer the pond is down and I may be able to recover a few more logs. This isn't much, and it isn't very good, but it should be gotten rid of.

* My parents have some firewood stocked at their house, and I plan to cut up some more downed trees for them. If we get low during the winter, I can draw on some of that wood.

* There's a big diseased elm tree which has been cut down and needs to be hauled off a few miles from here. The downside is that the bark needs to be stripped off right away (something of a nuisance) so that the dutch elm disease doesn't spread. Elm is good firewood, though this stuff needs to dry a little more.

It doesn't look like natural gas prices will be as high as they were last summer, though it could still top $1.00/therm for much of the winter. I'm going to follow the same strategy as last year: keep the thermostat turned way down during the week, up a little on the weekends during the day, and use the stove as much as possible to keep the main furnace from kicking in.

I think it is possible, depending on the weather and natural gas prices, to save as much as $2,000 on heat this winter. $1,500 should be well within our reach, given that we saved over $1,000 last year and only had the stove for half the season and lower-quality wood.