Fitness by Firewood

NORTHERN HEALTH

Doug Sack, 75, is the former sports editor of the Yukon News and the Whistler Question and longtime columnist for Ski Canada magazine. Before that, he was young.

FITNESS BY FIREWOOD

The weight of wood

Yukon firewood is sold by the cord which, as everybody knows, is 4’x 4’ x 8’ or 128 cubic feet. Big companies such as sawmills, pulp mills and lumber producers buy and sell wood by weight using a very simple universal formula to calculate the value of the wood. Professional scalers know exactly how much each kind of tree is worth, from the heaviest (white oak at 5,580 lbs per cord) to the lightest which are larch pines weighing about ten pounds each.

According to Wikipedia, you will find the most common trees sold as firewood in the Yukon Taiga described thusly:

“Boreal forests occur in the more southern parts of the taiga ecoregion that spreads across the northern parts of the world. The boreal forest zone consists of closed-crown conifer forests with a conspicuous deciduous element. The proportions of the dominant conifers (white and black spruces, jack pine, tamarack larch and balsam fir) vary greatly in response to interactions among climate, topography, soil, fire, pests, and perhaps other factors including floods.”

Amid-septuagenarian Yukon retiree, 75, has three readily apparent options for a productive summer fitness program: 1. Fishing, 2. Golf or 3. Firewood.

For the purposes of this piece, your participatory journalist chose the latter because he felt certain he needed at least a 10cord pile of good firewood close to the front door of the funky old cabin located northwest of Whitehorse, in the electoral district known as Grizzly Valley, within the considerable shadow of Pilot Mountain.

The contractor, 38, who supplied the raw 16” logs over the

By Aug. 15, an impressive eight cords of firewood is prominently displayed in front of the home

course of the cutting season is a total marvel at his chosen profession and a Rembrandt in the ancient artform of shrinking dead trees to fit into pits and/or stoves.

For the fair price of $250 a cord, he delivered nine cords, one at a time, in his modified one-ton wood wagon. That fee is a rarity in this remote northern territory, well-known for speculative woodcutters, many of whom charge far more for tinder-dry swamp wood that burns like cardboard.

The fitness fun begins when the wood flies off his trusty truck upon delivery. It takes this old splitter/stacker 20 hours of slow, steady work to process each cord.

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PHOTO: Doug Sack

That means 10 days total because here is the secret to success with old, life-battered muscles: If you only work at it two hours per day, you can go all summer, May through October, from Monday to Friday with Saturdays optional and Sundays a mandatory day of rest, no exceptions. The pudding’s proof is in the pics. Remember this: Firewood is a marathon, not a sprint. n

After researching several other wood-buying sites, we averaged everything out and came up with these figures for the approximate weights of a cord of Yukon firewood: 4,250 lbs for green and 4,050 lbs for seasoned.

Any wood cut down between April 1 and Oct. 31 and dried for a minimum of two months can be sold as seasoned. Everything else is considered green. Any wood dried over six months under the midnight sun in summer is considered aged. All that coffee shop chatter about firekill vs beetle-kill is just Joe-talk between sips and bites. It doesn’t matter what killed the tree as much as when it happened.

The optimum amount of moisture content in firewood for maximum heat is 20 to 25 per cent depending on which source you trust.

In summary, our almost 11 cords of split and stacked firewood for the winter of 2022 weighed in at slightly more than 23.75 tons or 47,500 lbs.

That should satisfy just about anybody’s definition of a good summer workout …at least for a 75–year–old former working man with a worn-out Yukon back. n

Celebrate the Yukon’s Agriculture Industry

Yukon Agriculture Award

Do you know someone who has made a difference to the Yukon’s agricultural sector? We are now accepting nominations for the Yukon Agriculture Award. The award is to recognize an outstanding individual farmer, farm family, agri-food producer or processor, or a farming advocate who is making a significant contribution to the Yukon’s agriculture community. Learn more on how to prepare your nomination at yukon.ca/yukon-agriculture-award.

Submit your nominations by email to agriculture@yukon.ca by 12 p.m. on Wednesday, February 16, 2022.

If you sense your car drifts or pulls to one side, you could have a wheel alignment problem. The alignment of your vehicle’s wheels can affect the way it handles. Your car may drive fi ne, but when you look at your tires, you may notice that they are wearing. Your steering wheel could also feel not centred. Our team of professionals can align your wheels by placing your vehicle on a wheel alignment machine. This machine uses laser guided measurements to allow our mechanic to set and adjust the suspension components back to the factory specifi cations. You can prevent the impact of wear and tear on your tires, reduce pulling and feel confi dent in a safer drive.

North of 60° Agriculture Conference

The 2022 North of 60° Agriculture Conference will feature experts from across the country offering talks on how to manage and improve your farm business. All presentations are free and open to anyone interested in northern agriculture and food production. This year’s conference is happening on Saturday, February 19 with presentations scheduled in the morning and early afternoon. The event is exclusively online and you must pre-register. To register, send an email to agriculture@yukon.ca confirming your attendance. We will send you a confirmation with all the details you will need to attend the online conference. For more information and to see the conference schedule, visit yukon.ca/north-60-agriculture-conference.

Contact

For questions, contact the Agriculture Branch. Email agriculture@yukon.ca or call (867) 667-5838 or toll free 1-800-661-0408 and ask to be transferred.