So I recently had three large oak trees felled by the city in my backyard that were encroaching on power lines. I’m working on processing the wood into firewood but it’s a big project. Most of the wood I’ve yet to process I’ve stacked on pallets to get them off the damp ground and allow air flow. Some of it however is far too heavy for me to move until I’ve chopped it into shorter pieces and split the shorter pieces and so it’s just been lying directly on the ground.
In the section of Lars Mytting’s book Norwegian Wood entitled “Wood That Never Dries” he writes “in deciduous trees for which the drying conditions are poor at the outset, the moisture content never falls to the level it does in timber that has been dried quickly… The rule is never to let timber lie wet in the forest…get it back home and chop, split, and stack it.” My question is this: How quickly does wood need to be removed from the ground if one wants it to dry properly? There must be a length of time that is acceptable to let wood lie on the ground if one can’t immediately move it for whatever reason. I just have no idea if that length of time is one hour or one week or one month or whatever. This is a fairly new area of interest for me and I’m feeling rather in over my head so any input is appreciated.
