Firewood Market Is Cooling Down
IN COLLEGE, Stephen Fenig specialized in foreign affairs. In the recession, he is specializing in firewood.</br></br>Fenig, who is 21 and graduated from the University of Virginia last year, discovered, quickly, that there were few jobs in his specialty. To have any hope at all, he would have to getanadvanced degree.</br></br>Suddenly FenigÛªs horizons shrank from their international proportions. Remembering the energy crisis of last winter, when people were stockpiling firewood as if it were gold bullion (or sugar or toilet paper or paper bags), he decided to help satisfy what he thought would be a comparable demand this year.</br></br>He bought a truck, a power saw, some wedges, an ax, a sledge hammer and some expensive accident insurance and began looking for trees that could be converted into cords of firewood that, delivered and stacked, would sell for $60.</br></br>in places as distant as Orange County and as close as construction sites in his neighborhood in Falls Church, Fenig found enough hickory and oak logs to get started in business.