How much wood would a woodcutter cut? . . . .

An old cottonwood that had to be brought down finally got split into firewood this winter.  This pile represents a lot of hard work for the wood splitter (my husband), as well as the wood hauler (me).  All this wood has to be loaded into Beetle, the ancient green Dodge and stacked onto wood pallets next to the shed.  My share of the labor has been waiting for repairs to the old Dodge, but it came home from the garage this past week so I am out of excuses.  If this was the only pile it would be bad enough.  But there are two more!

In another location we are splitting the stumps from several silver leaf poplars that came down in an early autumn snow storm.  And not far away is a pile of Ponderosa pine that we split from beetle killed trees in the mountains of Colorado.  After helping a neighbor clear the downed trees from his yard, we hauled them home, cut them into two-foot lengths and split them for firewood.

The Chief Fire Tender likes to mix it up in the woodbox and build a fire with a mix of pine, cottonwood and poplar.  I haven’t figured out yet how I’m going to stack all of this in the proper proportion so that when we bring in a load, it will have the right mix.  I’m absolutely certain he will offer some instructions!