Wood Stove Fire - Interior Forest Fire

19 August 2012
10:09 AM

Sunrise at	5:52 AM	in direction	57°	East-northeast
Sunset at	9:54 PM	in direction	302°	West-northwest

Duration of day: 16 hours, 1 minute (6 minutes, 51 seconds shorter than yesterday)


Last blog report on wood cutting, wood splitting, and winter wood supply - I promise.  I wrote this 8/19 and am just now took photos to include.

A start - Half the birch and 1/5 of the spruce from trees felled
early last week; next year's wood

Wood is a fuel, whether we want to see it consumed in fire or not.  I could smell smoke early yesterday (8/18) and then it abated.  Today (8/19), the air is thick with wood smoke.  I checked the Active Fire Map (Alaska Interagency Coordination Center -> Alaska Fire -> Fire Information).  The Dry Creek Fire has kicked up in response to the warm, dry temperatures we had last week.  I have windows and doors closed today.

For our part, we continue to accumulate our store of winter fuel. You can see by the photo below that we have two cords of spruce to split under the brown tarp.  One cord of split birch is under the black visqueen plastic and we have another one coming. What you can't see is the 1/2 cord of birch behind the split birch that needs to be split before stacking.  2 1/2 cords will take Gary and me one entire weekend to split.  We will have to stack as we have time after that.  We are in good shape for winter; now all we need is the good weather to last through August and some of September. 

And miles to go before I rest ...
Wood to be split and stacked

There is the rub.  Good weather for us could mean good weather for the Dry Creek Fire.

8/21 Update ... As it turned out, the fire wind shifted and apparently died back down as there has been no strong smoke for the last few days.  The red beetle I photographed earlier is called a birch shield bug.  It is native to the region and also a borer, sucker.  How the amber birch leaf miner survived the winter to affect so many trees is a mystery; they are not native and it was cold last year.  The birch shield bug is native and why they were so thick this year is also a mystery.  I am told I should fertilize my trees.  That could be challenging, spreading nutrients across an 1.5 acres of forest.

Suggestions?