Ever paid extra for premium firewood? I wrote The Firewood Buyer's Guide to help you compare species, understand prices, and know exactly what to ask before ordering another load.
https://lumberjackguides.com/buyers-guide/

Mixed hardwood ... ash, oak, beech and silver maple. One fire, a little variety. One wood can assist the other and balance heat output.  Nearly 60 years of wood heating  I will continue as long as possible.  Nothing is more satisfying than splitting and piling the winter wood supply.  It's good work ... a good reason to be enjoying the outdoors in the cooler seasons.

14:10 Sugar maple also grows farther north than most of the other dense hardwoods, and it is plentiful.  One of the challenges of burning wood for heat is that the farther north you are, the more you must rely on softer conifers, aspen, and birch.  These woods require much more volume and frequent feeding because they are not very dense.

Love your analogies

Ive heated our house for 45 years with wood. Used every kind of wood here in New England, why does no one mention black birch? Burns hot and leaves great coals in the morning. Probably my favorite.

From mass , I love maple , seasons fast , I love oak but takes time , ash is the wood I wish I always had 5 cords of

On our 17 acre forest in southern Indiana, we have a lot of old dead and dying dogwoods. They often don't need to be split, and get mixed in with the other varieties.  When we open the doors of the stove, we enjoy watching beech burn.  The flame patterns and are a joy to watch.  A lot of beech pieces have blow holes that shoot a blue flame out the side.  We have a lot of maple, oak, hickory, beech, poplar, sassafras, cherry, tupelo and cedar.  Not much walnut, the former owners logged off all the walnut.

beech, hickory, red oak

This is spot on.  Here in the NW we also have tons of alder (easy, simple, works great).  We don't have much hardwood so we save our maple rounds for overnight burns.

Here in the northwest, Douglas Fir is everywhere.  We have better woods to burn, Madrone is very good.  But Fir is what we usually have on hand.

Very educational. Clear and interesting and attention holding presentation. THANK YOU

Great info. Love the commentary!

I grew up on northeastern Indiana. The woodlots are largely Oak and Hickory. We had a limestone fireplace with glass doors that heated our big family room in the winter. We'd get the fire going well with Oak kindling and some oak splits. Once it was burning hot, we piled on a couple of good sized Hickory logs. As they got well ignited, you could feel the heat move to the next level. The fire stayed hot all through the evening and still had some glowing coals the next morning. You're totally right that splitting Hickory is no fun.

I live an hour south of Montreal in NY. We have loads of firewood available.  I've used a chainsaw since I was 12. So more than 4 decades, we used to fell, buck, haul, split and stack. Now I just buy it cut & split.
But I've come to appreciate Poplar on November mornings when you need to warm the house but want the fire done by 10AM. I love Beech, Cherry and Ash since they are readily available...
Oak is great, but it gets harvested for flooring etc rather than firewood. I horde the cherry for my smoker. Any large chunks of maple get set aside for 'all nighters'
I built a pole barn a while back that holds twice as much wood as I need. I buy wood in the summer for the following winter, the wood I burn has sat in the pole barn for at least 1.5 years. This seasoning time has improved the performance of whatever firewood i use immensely.

I live in western Oregon. Twenty-eight years ago I converted my wet pasture to a woodland and intentionally planted three species: Oregon ash, black locust, and Willamette Valley ponderosa pine, all for firewood. First thinning three years ago. Excellent firewood covering all the bases you mentioned in your piece. There is no wood I wouldn't burn so long as it's properly seasoned. But you are right; have realistic expectations for the wood you've got and be intentional of what goes in the stove when.

I've been burning wood for 33 winters. I take wood when it's available. Plenty of people are willing to give you the wood if you want to work for it. I stack it in categories. I live in Pennsylvania and I have what I call fall and spring or late winter wood. I save my hard oak, hickory and sometimes apple and locas when available starting around Xmas throw Feb. I always have medium wood to carry in if they're calling for a seasonal warmer spell. My one neighbor is amazed how I manage my wood and I never knew it until he told me how he tells his friend that I can point at any stack of wood and tell you what year I'm going to burn it and what time of the year. So it was cool knowing someone noticed

I am in SE Ohio. We have plenty of Black Oak and Sugar Maple to burn here. I love burning both in my stove.

In central Wisconsin we have all of theses woods. Indoor vs outdoor burners are so opposite as to what they can burn its difficult at times to say they do the same thing. Ash burns closer to oak than you have listed. I have never known 1 ash chunk to split easily. The grain is always slightly twisted. Birch is a starter wood. Even poor firestarters love how easy it starts. Aspen or poplar burns fast, but it's plentiful. Seasons quickly. Black locust is my favorite wood to split. You can barely tap on it with a maul, and it splits clean. Honey Locust burns just like oak. It looks like red oak from the cut side. Minimum of 2 years to season. Basswood smells sweet, but it's close to Aspen when burning. Usually very heavy when wet. Thank you for this video. As a kid I remember elm trees. Sometimes called piss elm. Pungent odor. The final tree is Box Elder. The cousin maple the other maples never want to talk about. Fresh cut trees smell like rotting wet grass. Quick growing with a root system that will quickly take over a forest. They burn like silver maple. They carry so much water in them.

Thanks for the video. Kawartha Lakes Ontario Canada its ash. We have iron wood to which is similar to locust but it only grows to 6-8" diameter, so too much work. Black cherry is here too and you can leave it on the forest floor for ever and still come back to harvest it. Ants get into dead ash so get it within a couple of years if dead. I love the sent of popular, it's great to mix in the ash when starting the fire. Sugar maple is a sweet treat when cutting. It smell like you're at the sugar shack. Happy burning everyone 😅

We burned only green ash in the seventies in extreme northern MN. Bought “ stumpage” from the county, and went to fetch it in January. We would go out to the designated site on the first Saturday, and make a landing, and “ roads” for the JD 40 crawler that the neighbor used for skidding logs to the landing. Then, the following Saturday, we commenced to getting wood for three to four families. Took the month of January, but was good, honest work. Many memories of those days. At twenty below, an eight foot Green Ash bolt will split with one to three hits with an eight pound splitting maul.👍