Firewood Sales Heat Up During Cold Weather

This month’s cold snap may have some Ventura County residents moving slower than usual, but many dealers of cut firewood can’t seem to get around fast enough to fill a booming demand.

“I’d say we’re selling 50 cords per week,” Gloria Stott of West Coast Tree Service in Ventura said Thursday. “I’ve had three calls already this morning, and I’ll probably get a couple more this afternoon--and this is daily.”

For those unfamiliar with woodcutters’ jargon, a cord is 128 cubic feet of neatly stacked and tightly packed logs, measuring 8 feet long, 4 feet wide and 4 feet high.

West Coast Tree Service’s sales have doubled in recent weeks, with deliveries as far as Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Ojai and Santa Barbara, Stott said. The company sells cords of mixed oak for $125 and premium “A+ seasoned oak” for $200.

“It’s top dollar because it’s the best to burn and it’s not easy to get,” Stott said.

Jim Kenton of Ventura, who is selling eucalyptus wood for $150 per cord, agreed that good-quality oak is hard to find.

“Farming oak for the wood is a thing of the past,” Kenton said, adding that many local ordinances prohibit the felling of live oak trees.

“If they fall down you can take them, or if they’re dead,” he said.

Kenton said that although oak is favored as firewood, the hard, resin-filled trunks and limbs of eucalyptus trees are plentiful in the county and almost as good, burning long and hot.

Soft woods, such as pine, burn much faster and are generally cheaper than hard woods such as oak and eucalyptus.

Kenton said he hasn’t noticed a huge upswing in his firewood deliveries.

“It was real slow in December, and right now I’m getting more calls than usual, but I’ve been in business for 20 years and it’s about average for me,” he said.

A few miles east of Santa Paula, however, members of the Diamond family have been surprised by the number of buyers calling for deliveries of their seasoned avocado wood, which sells for $100 per cord.

“All of a sudden we’re getting four or five calls per day instead of two or three per week,” Larry Diamond said.

Diamond said his 25-year-old son, Todd, is earning his tuition to Cal State Northridge by selling avocado wood from a neighboring grove in Timber Canyon that had been killed by a recent fire.

“It killed the trees but didn’t burn them up, so we’re cutting them and selling them,” Diamond said. “It gets cold and wet and they start calling.”