NOW! The best time to gather in firewood for use during the months of winter is the summer time - now.
Precisely, the late summer and fall days are better. Working wood can be more pleasant in late summer or Fall.
That's prelude to a suggestion which keeps bugging me as I ride along our Interstate and Regular highways. We ride for endless miles and see, on both sides of the speed strips , an endless array of dead or downed trees, knotted growths of struggling saplings - ten or twelve trying to grow in an area where three might reach maturity if given a fair chance.
I can think of three good reasons why this excess supply of usable firewood ought to put to use. First: large segments of our population burn wood to heat their homes and cook their foods as well as other uses and they would - I'm sure - welcome a less expensive source of fuel. This would, in time, cut down on the use of electricity and of other means of heating.
Secondly: a great many of our forest fires and brush-fires start along highways when unthinking persons toss cigarette stubs from car windows or when careless campers mis-use fire in their hurry to rest and to recreate. A third reason for using this excess material which Nature provides so abundantly is unseen but real. Such use would lower the amount of harmful gases generated by rotting vegetation. Rotting is burning at a slower rater. It creates gases and residue some of which can be good for many other plants but which also harms parts of our general environment. If you have any doubts about that little quirk of Nature stand close to a cud-chewing, contented, cogitating cow where , when you take even just a shallow breath, you can be driven along the edge of illness.
You can find other reasons why non-use of such a handy resource is wasted.
I would like to see some sort of legislation, possibly with each state's highway construction and maintenance programs which would enable landowners, if they agreed, to have their property adjacent to highways "cleaned" annually. The state contacts with individuals in various localities have such work done which would safely, economically and steadily remove downed, dying and unsightly debris from such areas at some set distance - perhaps a quarter of a mile back from the highway berm.
I should think it would prove too difficult and very unwise simply to open such activity to just any private citizen in need of firewood. by granting permission to work in such areas. It could well be fashioned so that it worked to benefit local fund raising or , in some areas , it could become a source of revenue.
Why should we continue to ignore such an opportunity for us to create what the media and some politicians can truly call "new jobs"?
The next time you visit your mega-market, take note of the little bundle of leftover carpentry wood pieces, hand-picked from your local housing development sites - selling to firewood buyers for around $3.00 a bundle - about ten-cents per stick, at the least.
To waste such a ready source of revenue is simply wrong. Can we get busy and correct it to everyone's advantage?
Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 5-13-06 [c559wds]
