Concerning Oak Trees

Oh, the post oaks and red oaks make very good firewood, but you don’t want them in your yard. Most trees shed their leaves and get it over with, but not oaks. They stay after it all winter. So you rake the leaves and then rake them again, and again. It gets tiresome after a while. 

My father’s philosophy about firewood was that you kept the dead trees cleared off your property by cutting them up for firewood. That works fine on most sorts of trees, but have you ever tried to cut a dead blackjack oak? You might as well try to cut through an anvil. I literally have seen sparks fly from the chain when we were sawing a blackjack. You saw for about ten minutes and your chain has to be sharpened again. Oh, if you can get the wood cut, it will burn for a while! There are a lot of BTUs in a blackjack log, but getting it into usable form is a real headache. 

And then blackjacks have those confounded dead limbs that always seem to be in the way. They are almost lethal. If you run into one of them accidentally, it can rip a gash in your skin or poke out an eye. I figure that artists must have used blackjacks as models for some of their spooky cartoon characters. 

Lest I leave the wrong impression about all oaks, I want to go on record as saying that red oaks are about the best you can choose for cutting firewood. They are usually straight and free of too many small limbs, and they are easy to split and have a wonderful woody smell. If you find a good-sized red oak, you can cut a truckload of wood in a hurry. 

But if you are building a house, don’t put it in the middle of a grove of post oaks. That is, unless you just particularly enjoy raking leaves.