Before/After Wood Chopping

I guess this is more after/before than before/after based on how Google Photos organized the two photos in this collage.  Thus...On the bottom of this photo collage above, you can see a pile of wood that I harvested out of our backyard in it's mostly raw state.  When the guys came to clear out some trees before we built in 2016, I think they left behind a bunch of these cut up chunks of trunk/branches in the yard.  They're mostly Walnut trees with a few Maple pieces. 

I picked up this metal log holder from Menards and decided - because we now have a wood-burning fireplace - to pile the stuff up close to the screened porch.  And, I'm glad I did.  Because as I was collecting the pieces of wood from around the yard, one thing that was consistent:  they were all wet.  And by laying on the ground, they weren't able to dry out at all.  But, a few weeks of laying in this rack, which is underneath the eave of our roof, and they've mostly dried out completely.

So, that leads us to the top photo of the collage above.   If you look closely, you'll note that the bottom two rows of wood in the photos are identical.  But, up from there?  They're different.  I went out and bought both a maul and a splitting wedge.  And then got busy chopping the big pieces up into manageable splits of wood.  It was kinda rewarding, actually.  You can click on the photo and zoom in to see all the chopped wood. 

You're probably wondering why I stopped with the last two rows?  Welp...that's because I broke the maul.  Handle snapped.  Back to Menards we go, I guess.