I am picky about what I burn for hardwoods. Why waste time on white birch or soft maple when the same amount of gas and time can be used on beech and rock maple? I don't even like to put up ash, although some does get into the pile every year. Having said that, I plan to put in some hemlock this year to burn in spring and fall when I don't want to cook myself out of the house.
WinterDeere
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Same. The only abundant local woods I will drag home are red oak, white oak, or hickory. I won't even both with our other other locally-abundant hardwoods (walnut, silver maple, sassafras, cherry), there's just too much of the former always available to spend time and space on the latter.
But I do get walnuts from my own yard, whenever a storm manages to knock one over. It's easier to just split and stack them, than make them go away any other way.
Ash has recently fallen into that same category, thanks to EAB. They're dying all over my direct neighbor's properties, and it's easier for me to to just split and stack the stuff, than making the 7 miles each way trip to where I normally harvest oak.
Oak is great for anyone who's 3 years ahead on their splitting, since the stuff takes 3 summers to really dry properly. I'm usually 3-4 years ahead, so I love the stuff. But ash is actually one of the better woods for anyone who's a little behind on their wood splitting, or starting out fresh without a good backlog, as it can dry pretty well in just one summer.
ruffdog
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Not everyone that cuts pine burns pine in a wood stove. About half of my wood cutting is trimming, storm clean-up, or landscape work and I cut all species doing that.Being from the northeast, I sometimes forget that people in some parts of this country actually cut and burn pine.
My stoves traditionally eat only oak and hickory, although they've been seeing an awful lot of ash since the Emerald Ash Borer made it out here the last several years.
Pine and all other connifers get left to rot where it falls, or pushed into the burn pit. If I lived in a place where oak, hickory, and ash weren't plentiful, then I'm sure I'd burn it. But around here we always have enough hardwoods dying or on the ground, that it's just not worth wasting wood shed space on connifers.
WinterDeere
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Good point. But even so, I suspect there's an order of magnitude difference in the volume of wood cut for heating versus trimming and landscape work, for most wood burners.
The actual mix of connifers to hardwoods on my property is probably close to 50/50 by count, since I've been planting connifers at a rate roughly 8:1 over hardwoods the last 15 years. But the yearly Christmas tree aside, I only ever cut a connifer if it needs to be taken down due to damage. Just doing a quick mental tally, I'd guess I probably make 200x - 400x more cuts in hardwood, in the course of processing wood for heating.