Maine ranks No. 1 in the nation for its dependency on heating oil, so in recent winters life in the Pine Tree State has gotten tougher because of rising energy costs. Oil prices may be dropping for the moment but history tells us this trend won't last.

As the proverb goes, though, every dark cloud has a silver lining, and this crisis has spawned three enormous positives in Maine:

1. It has spurred greater interest in a proven technology -- wood-pellet stoves and furnaces.

(Some folks shy away from pellet stoves because they fear "new" technology, but in Europe, people have heated with wood pellets for decades. In fact, right now, 80 percent of new homes in Sweden and 76 percent of new ones in Austria heat with wood-pellet furnaces or stoves.)

2. For Maine's outdoors folks, pellet stoves offer a huge plus that receives little press. The increase in sustainable, wood-cutting practices in this state to keep up with the new demand for wood fiber to make pellets, as well as to supply firewood for traditional stoves, has given hunters and wildlife watchers in the know optimism about the future of their sports here. Wood harvesting creates better habitat for white-tailed deer, ruffed grouse, woodcock, varying hare and other creatures that love edge habitat.

3. Not only will this emphasis in wood fiber lessen our dependency on foreign oil, but it will also create jobs and more jobs in a state with growing unemployment.

During recent decades in the bottom third of the state, a lack of frequent wood cutting has caused secondary forests to grow into primary woodlands, an ecological disaster for grouse, woodcock and hare.

Deer require primary forests with conifer canopies for winter cover and mast trees for high-protein, mid-to-late fall food, but these ungulates also rely on edge habitat for herbaceous forage in spring, summer and early fall.

During my lifetime in Maine, I have seen this change firsthand as this vast region has turned from great to poor upland habitat:

After World War II, farmers with small operations quit and headed to the city for jobs, often in factories, and then in the 1950s new state laws aimed at improving hygiene in dairy farms knocked many more farmers out of business. Fields quickly grew into secondary forests, and upland birds, hare and deer flourished, turning the 1960s and '70s into a golden age for these sports.

In the near future, primary forests may change to secondary far quicker than we think as more and more people attempt to beat oil prices by buying pellet stoves or heating with old-fashioned firewood, which in turn creates edge habitat from wood-harvesting operations.

Wood-pellet stoves possess allures difficult to deny:

• For starters, 40-pound bags bought and delivered by the ton prove much easier to handle and cause less mess than several cords of firewood.

• Pellet stoves utilize conifers or deciduous species and use all the wood from each tree, including trunks, limbs, branchlets and so forth. In short, it's far more efficient to harvest wood for pellets than for firewood.

• Burning wood pellets creates far less ash and other residual matter than firewood does.

• Burning wood pellets instead of wood ends the problem of bringing critters and fungi into the house via sticks of wood, which may lead to an infestation. (One dark night when I was a kid, my father was carrying firewood into our house from an unlighted shed and brought a snake in with an armful of wood.)

• For finishers, and probably the most important consideration, wood pellets cost much, much less money than burning oil does to heat homes. Compared to using strictly oil, my family's savings are running about 60 percent less to heat our home with pellets rather than oil this winter. I'll have a more exact figure by mid-April.

A lot of misinformation is floating around about pellet stoves, too. For example, when the big December ice storm knocked electricity out for 18 hours in Belgrade Lakes village, two different people talking with me on cell phones mentioned that pellet stoves do not work in power outages.

I quickly informed these two callers that my family owns a pellet stove, an EasyFire from Monitor of Maine in Benton, and it was churning out heat at that very moment. Our stove has battery backup and warmed our home for 18 straight hours until line workers restored power.

One negative about pellet stoves need not be a problem for folks who choose the right stove shop to purchase one. The stove's very design relies on free movement of fan-driven air inside it, so owners must clean them often, a simple, simple job that takes but scant minutes to keep them running like a Swiss watch.

A dirty one clogged with ash can turn into a nightmare, though. If folks selling the stoves show newcomers basic maintenance procedures, it makes all the difference.

I predict Maine entrepreneurs will turn this state into the wood-pellet capital of the world in a few years, and it will really be a positive move for our economy and for wildlife that need edge habitat with its rejuvenating herbaceous forage.

Make no mistake. Wood-pellet technology is the future in Maine, and humans and critters alike will all benefit from this one method of lessening America's dependency on Middle East oil.

 

Ken Allen, of Belgrade Lakes, is a writer, editor and photographer.