I think we paid about $160 per cord for firewood two years ago. We bought enough at that time to get us through two winters, but our stockpile is getting pretty low. We knew we wouldn’t have enough left to get us through this winter.
So we started calling around to see how much it would cost to get a few cords delivered. What we found was that the price has gone up in the last couple years. So instead of paying the new going rate, we decided to go get a firewood permit and do it ourselves.
I wish we’d done it before the hunting season started, but we never seem to be able to plan ahead.
This was our first attempt to cut our own firewood, so we were a little tentative at first. We wanted to make sure we were doing it all right. There are quite a few rules pertaining to cutting firewood, and we were cutting our own in order to save money. We didn’t want to negate all that with a ticket for doing something wrong.
We also wanted to make sure nobody chainsawed their leg off or dropped a tree on themselves, so we started pretty slow to make sure we were being safe. So it probably took us a lot longer than it takes the people who do this for a living, but even so, there were four of us, and it took us two hours to cut and load a cord, and we spent an hour and a half traveling each way. That works out to 20 hours of time, and we still haven’t cut the wood into firewood-size logs or split those logs. The bottom line is that the people who are charging $210 per cord aren’t charging enough. Not even close.
Not that I’m going to pay $300 per cord. I found that even though it’s a lot of work, I think I’ll keep cutting my own firewood. I’ll just try to do it before hunting season next year.
