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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> > Right now, all of our wood is rotten, old, and damp, and it is very 
> difficult getting enough heat from the burner with that old wood. Chalk 
> this 
> experience up to a learning homesteading type of lesson, one I do not want 
> to 
> repeat. 
> 

We're blessed with good quality  hardwood this winter (thanks largely to the 
fact that the drought killed so many elderly trees) but many times we've 
found 
ourselves with a lot of the sort of marginal wood of which you speak.

We are on the edge of coal country here and so coal is pletiful, easily had, 
and cheap.  We keep a few sacks of coal and when we need or want to burn some 
of that iffy, damp wood, we put a few lumps of coal under it and it all  
burns 
quite well.

Good firewood and burning marginal wood using coal is my paradigm of two 
proposals for homesteading:  One is to economic self containment  of the 
esentials 
(good, dry, hardwood), the other is to keep the homestead going by continuous 
infustions of cash (the damp wood kept ingited by the coal).

James