12 Self-Sufficient Uses for Firewood

As autumn matures, the nights are growing crisper, and the smell of smoke is wafting from the neighbors’ chimneys, speaking of cuddles in front of fireplaces while sharing glasses of homemade apple cider.  But beyond the romance of the season, autumn is also a season of harvest, storage, and preparation. In addition to food stores and other goods, having an ample supply of seasoned firewood is essential.

“But I don’t have a fireplace!” 

Having a way to burn wood for heat in your home safely is ideal, but not everyone has a fireplace or wood-burning stove. (And no, you shouldn’t just bring the BBQ inside if the heat goes out.  Carbon Monoxide poisoning is a thing.)

Burning firewood outside is also a consideration, and many of us have some small stockpiles of wood stored near our regular hiking or camping areas in case we decide to stay out for the night, or in situations during which the conditions determine for us.  It is even possible for natural catastrophe to leave you stranded out in the elements.

Fuel is critical to survival

Understanding firewood as a long term survival fuel is vital. If you find yourself in a wilderness survival situation getting your hands on the wood and getting it burning is critical.

But let’s say you planned well, spent time insulating your house for efficiency, and simply have some wood left over after a long winter.  Or maybe some of that wood started to rot and was no longer ideal home-heating fuel.  Did all of that gathering, splitting, and stacking go to waste?

Of course not!  In a self-sufficiency lifestyle, we try to minimize waste and maximize results.  Here are twelve ways we can use firewood beyond merely heating your home or campsite with it.  Each of these can easily be accomplished, even in a Long Island backyard.

12 Ways to Use Firewood

1 – Making Charcoal

A crucial part of survival is the charcoal you make from burning wood. Charcoal can be used for making things like water filters, but can also be used to create serious heat and even forge metal. Charcoal is a powerful ingredient.  While most survivalists carry related tinder items like charcloth or char cord because of their compactness and durability, the making of charcoal from firewood is a closely related old-world skill that can make for hotter, longer-lasting fires that catch quickly. Plus, there’s nothing like marshmallows toasted over the nice, even heat of some glowing red coals.

2 – Soap-Making

The ashes of fire are essential for making lye, which is a key ingredient in soap making.  Campers and bushcrafters know that the best way to keep cookware clean is to mix a bit of ash with the leftover fats and grease in a pan.  The lye in the ash reacts with the fats in a process called saponification, causing the fats to turn into a basic soap.

On a larger scale, many homesteaders use rendered fats and lye-water made from hardwood ashes to make some lovely soap products that are great for household chores, laundry, and personal hygiene.

3 – Smoking Meat

It’s been said that the ancient Mongols would cure meat by packing it between the saddle and the blanket as they rode.  The back-and-forth action of the horse’s gait would denature the proteins and create something similar to jerky.  If that doesn’t sound quite appealing, you may want to try smoking your meats. In the event a a power outage, you will not have a means to keep the meat cold and safe from decay. Smoking will help you with that.  Plus, your chicken won’t taste like a pony smells.

4 – Barter

If you have a place to harvest plenty of trees, as well as the tools to cut that wood and a way to transport it, you have a great business opportunity just waiting for you in the apocalypse. Knowing how crucial it is to have a fuel source,  you can offer your firewood to many people who may have other things you need (don’t count on the power of the paper dollar if the country collapses).  A surplus of quality firewood is something that can go a long way when it comes to creating a flow of goods from others in a barter situation.

5 – Hugelkultur

If you aren’t willing to wait for the end of the world to start being productive, maybe something like hugelkultur is more your style.  Hugelkultur, meaning “hill-culture,” is a style of gardening or farming that uses layered media to produce a nutrient-rich, space-efficient, and mostly maintenance-free growing experience.

To start a hugelkultur bed, logs are soaked, buried in other lawers of sod, soil, and other growing media, forming a hill in which to plant crops.  Because the wood absorbs so much moisture, irrigation can be severely reduced or even eliminated.  Since we are also working in 3 dimensions with the hilly profile, the growing density is also improved.  The decaying logs release nutrients for years.

6 – Mulch the Fruit Trees

If you have rotting logs in your firewood pile, loose scraps from the splitting process, or you have a wood chipper, mulch might be your new best friend.  Placing mulch around the base of trees helps preserve ground moisture, eliminates other plants that could compete for nutrients,  and slowly feeds the soil as it breaks down.  By providing a better growing environment, fruit trees will produce higher yields.

7 – Build Your Tribe

Focusing on productivity, preparation, and self-sufficiency is important.  But humans are social creatures, and we need the company of our fellow humans from time to time to maintain our sanity.  While slightly rotted wood or wood of a variety not appropriate for indoor fires may not be suitable for heating our homes, it may be perfect for an outdoor fire.  Cultivating relationships while sitting around a fire helps build a sense of community.

8 – Amend the Soil 

As mentioned above in the section on making soap, ash contains lye, which is a strong base.  If you are growing certain things in your garden that prefer basic soil, you can mix in a bit of wood ash to help neutralize any acidity.  If you plan your planting well, you could even have two separate compost piles, using ash in one to keep the pH high, and one using something like pine needles to keep the pH low for plants that prefer more acidic conditions.

9 – Make Raised Bed Borders

There’s a reason old-world homesteaders used logs to make their cabins.  Those logs were readily available, kind of in the way on the building site, and provided durable, long-lasting walls to contain their living space.  Unused firewood is also readily available and in the way.  Using creative stacking methods, we can create durable, long-lasting borders for our raised beds.

10 – Establish or Mulch Footpaths

Are you a hardcore, off-the-grid homesteader?  Maybe you like spending your time in contemplation out back in the outhouse.  OK, perhaps you just have a path on your property that you travel regularly or to which you want to add some curb appeal.  Using the same mulch we put around the trees in the orchard, we can create a pathway that is naturally weed-resistant, has good drainage, and which will self-level as it degrades, all without the environmental impacts of petroleum-based pavement products.

11 – Create Animal Habitats

You want to create the Snow White experience in your oasis of a backyard.  You want squirrels, chipmunks, field mice, crickets, and all sorts of furry woodland creatures living in harmony in your happy little paradise.  (Did we mention we have recipes for most of those critters?).  With a bit of creativity and some basic tools, you can craft a birdhouse, mouse palace, or chipmunk retreat out of a few leftover pieces of wood, or simply stack the extra firewood in a back corner of the yard to create a debris pile that will let our furry friends find shelter through the colder months.

12 – Mushroom Farming

Growing mushrooms at home can be a culinary adventure or an entrepreneurial revenue generator. By drilling some holes into a log and filling them mycelium plugs, your back yard, basement, or shed can become a fungus factory!  Oyster mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, and several other species are simple to grow, and can be sold at farmer’s markets or directly to restaurants.

Got Wood? 

As you can see, firewood can be an inexpensive way to heat your home (or hot tub), but it is also a source of natural resources, barter, income, and more, limited only by your needs and your creativity.  What creative things do you do with your extra wood?  Let us know by joining the conversation in the Forgotten Skillz Facebook group.

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