Every August, I make a short trip to a local event call the Woodsmen’s Field Days. This gathering is all about cutting down trees and then slicing them up into either firewood or lumber. Although it’s held in the small village of Boonville, N.Y., it has grown to one of the largest events of its kind in the nation. Several thousand people attend on all three days. If you like chainsaws, hydraulics, firewood processors and elk burgers, this is the place to be in late summer (Figure 1).
Plenty of wood-burning products are on display at this show. They range from kits for making barrel stoves to high-tech, pellet-fueled boilers from Europe. In the middle of this spectrum are several brands of outdoor wood-burning furnaces and single-stage wood-burning boilers.