LYNDEBOROUGH, N.H., Sept. 11 (UPI) -- Rising oil prices are heating up the New England firewood industry.
The Washington Post says stores are selling out their supplies of wood-burning stoves, the price of split wood has jumped past $200 a cord and would-be woodsmen are filling up classes on lumberjack skills.
Logger Tom Chrisenton said he can barely stay ahead of the demand as New Englanders stunned by the high price of oil flock back to the age-old fuel source.
"The stuff I'm cutting today will either be delivered this afternoon or tomorrow," Chrisenton said. "We can't keep up with it."
In 2001, nearly 10 percent of New England households got some of their heat from a wood stove -- more than three times the national average.
The last heyday of the New England firewood market was in the late 1970s, when oil shortages drove up the price of oil for home furnaces.
"It's becoming very much like 1979 again," said Richard Wright, a New Hampshire editor of a trade magazine for the business called Hearth & Home.
