"Well Duh" Moment

Ever have one of those “well, duh” moments? Yes, me too. I had one the other day as I was picking up all the limbs that had fallen in our yard during the last wind storm. In years past I would have broken them up and taken them in a truck load of yard debris to the local dump. But I realized we had been unthinkingly disposing of a large amount of natural compost, landscape material, and even heat source. For years we raked up pine needles from the fallout we get every autumn from the ten pine trees we have along one side of our property; now we still rake them up but we use them to create landscape bedding. The leaves we collect we use for bulb and plant mulch, and the sticks we pick up, large and small, now are used in the indoor wood stove. Remember, burning wood just speeds up the natural process that happens when trees die or loose limbs that eventually rot on the ground, resulting in roughly the same amount of CO2 and heat exchange. To protect the environment in wood burning use an efficient EPA certified wood stove, this will assure that your wood fire is not only comforting to your soul, but environmentally friendly as well.