Firewood, maple, and taking from the forest

Fuelwood permit fees, quotas, and maps are set annually — the DNR’s fuelwood page each season is the live word.

Fuelwood: honest heat for a modest fee

Households may cut dead and downed wood from mapped areas of state forest. The ticket is an inexpensive annual DNR fuelwood permit. Quantities are household-scale — think a winter’s worth of cords, not a logging sideline — and the maps are published fresh each year. The rules inside the permit are short. Dead and down only; no standing trees, dead or alive. Mapped areas only. Personal use only. It’s one of the older traditions on state land, and one of the best deals in Michigan heating.

And the rule running the other direction still applies. Once you’ve got it home, don’t move firewood across the state — invasive pests ride in it. Our camping guide carries the firewood commandment in full.

The sugar bush

Maple tapping is private-land only. Tapping wounds living trees, so state land is off the table. But sugaring remains one of Michigan’s great late-winter traditions, and it scales down beautifully. A few backyard maples, a handful of taps, and a long weekend of boiling makes real syrup. MSU Extension publishes the beginner’s path, and local sugarmakers run March open houses. The only warning anyone needs: the hobby is incurable.

The never-list, stated once and kindly

From state land: no live trees, no boughs, no birch bark, no Christmas trees. Michigan’s state forests aren’t a u-cut lot. (Some national forests sell holiday tree permits — that’s the federal side, forest by forest.) The forest gives generously: mushrooms, berries, nuts, windfall wood. The price of the generosity is leaving the living parts standing.

The signpost

The current fuelwood permit details and maps live at the DNR. Sugaring guides live at MSU Extension. Start with the foraging pillar.