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'Buy local' more than just a snappy motto when it's firewood
Finding out where that bundle came from can help you not get burned by ash borers.
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Read more about safe firewood handling at www.mda.state.mn.us/plants/pestmanagement/firewood.aspx.
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With 35 years in the firewood business, Mike Besta has customers so loyal that they don't even ask about price. But this year, some are asking about ash borers.
"Some of that ash is some of the best burning wood," said Besta, who cuts wood near North Branch and delivers it to the metro area and all over central Minnesota.
But concern is rising about ash borers since the insect turned up in St. Paul in May, having destroyed tens of millions of trees in Michigan and Ohio and threatening Minnesota's 900 million ash trees.
Minnesota officials have emphasized for years that the bug's chief means of travel is in firewood. With the arrival of the home wood burning season, they're also relying on regulations on firewood sales and heightened public awareness to slow the bug's spread.
Ash was second only to oak as the most popular type of wood burned by households in 2007-08, according to a joint state and federal study. It represented 17 percent of the wood burned that winter.
Hennepin and Ramsey counties, and Houston County in southeastern Minnesota, are under ash quarantines, meaning that no ash wood or brush can be removed from those areas without permission from the state Department of Agriculture. In Houston County, the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has stopped allowing permits to cut firewood on some state land. Ash can come into quarantine zones from areas that are not restricted, but officials are pushing a "shop local" strategy for homeowners, campers and anyone else who might burn wood.
Labels tell source of wood
State and federal government labeling and certification help consumers determine where firewood is from. Bundles from 100 miles or farther away, or from other states, are to carry a label saying so. For truckloads, the seller is required to carry documentation about the wood's origin.
Could firewood sold in forested Minnesota really come from that far away?
"I know we've seen wood from Kentucky," said Department of Agriculture entomologist Mark Abrahamson, the state's chief ash borer hunter.
Wood can be sold in a quarantine area, but it has to carry a federal government acknowledgement that it has been heat-treated or kiln-dried to a point that kills ash borer larvae.
Abrahamson said random inspections of wood bundlers at retailers outside Minnesota's quarantine areas haven't turned up any infested wood.
Besta said that, even though the wood he's selling was cut last year, he's separating out the ash so that those customers who don't want it don't get it.
People concerned about ash borers should burn all their ash firewood this winter to kill any larvae, officials said. Because the bug only attacks living wood, ash that's been cut for firewood won't attract new bugs. Even so, consumers should be vigilant about their wood's origin.
"The biggest thing is to just ask questions of the person selling it," Abrahamson said. "If they can't give you a good answer, you might think twice about buying it."
Bill McAuliffe • 612-673-7646
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