Firewood Delivery Of Cherry and Birch Face Cords - October 2019

Exactly one year ago, I posted photos and details of our annual firewood delivery from Best Firewood and talked about how we went with Cherry and Birch as our early season woods.  When we built our house, Nat insisted on a wood-burning fireplace with a masonry chimney.  We have one in our family room and we use the one on our screened porch.  When we bought the lot, there was a little bit of wood that had been cut down that was laying around.  Our firewood journey began with that inherited lot and some chopping in November of 2017.  

That lasted us until about mid-December.  And got us going in terms of burning fires most days we're home during the Winter.  Since then, we've had wood delivered each season that we've lived in our new house in Downers Grove starting with a mixed Face Cord that we had delivered right around Christmas of 2017.   From there, I've done check-ins on our consumption including:

• February 2018 consumption check
• Delivery in October 2018 - Cherry and Birch Face cords (1 each)
• November 2018 consumption check
• December 2018 consumption check
• Early February 2018 consumption check
• Delivery in February 2019 - 50/50 Cherry and Oak Face cord
• And then today's delivery in October 2019 - Cherry and Birch Face cords (1 each)

The folks have a nice online tool that allows you to order directly and then notifies you when your delivery is scheduled via text.  They told me that they were coming on a weekday, so I knew that I wasn't going home to accept the delivery, but like in year's past I had signs that I hung up showing the guys where I wanted things.  

For consumption tracking-purposes, these photos show where we started with things.  

At the very top of the post are the two racks in our screened porch.  They utilized the three slots in the racks and then piled some excess pieces on top of the racks.  

Below, is the third rack that I have that sits on a little landing outside of my office door.  This area is raised and covered with a roof, so it keeps the wood in a nice high/dry spot.  The only problem is that when I pull wood from here, I have to either traipse around the screened porch and grab an arms-full or go through my office and drag dirt and debris through the house.   So, while the weather isn't terrible, I tend to pick from this rack to get us through the Fall and leave the racks in the screened porch for when the snow is on the ground and I don't want to go outside.  

They couldn't get it all on this rack, so (below) there's this excess pile that is out in front of it on the ground. 

And the last place that they stashed wood is this other pile inside of the screened porch.  This is a mix of both Birch and Cherry and isn't an awesome spot to put it, but...because I wasn't home....this seemed fine. 

It is pretty clear that I can use another rack - either out on the landing by my office or (ideally) somewhere closer to the backdoor/in the screened porch.  Nat has already been very generous and patient with the (existing) ugly racks in the screened porch, so I don't think I should press my luck there....

I had posted last Summer about thinking of building some kind of shelter for the wood, but I think I'm over that now.  The 2 screened porch racks solve (mostly) for the wood.  The reason to build something like this is to get the wood delivered EARLIER in the season.  Right now, I'm ordering this wood at what I would consider 'early' in the Winter season.  We won't really start burning until November, but that means that I'm relying on Best Firewood to do all of the seasoning of the wood. 

I watch Eric from the Life in Farmland channel videos on Youtube and he talks about how he cuts and stacks and seasons wood for the best use over the course of a year or more.  Same with the husband/wife on the Outdoors with the Morgans YouTube channel.  They post a lot about firewood/stacking/seasoning. 

In an ideal world, I'd take delivery of our Winter firewood sometime in the late Spring/early Summer so I can have it on hand for six months of so then I'd have wood that was under my control for half a year before it goes on the fire. 

This load of wood has been seasoned as expected (in my opinion) as I am seeing moisture meter readings in the teens (percentage).  It sounds right (the clunking together).  The bark is right.  I see plenty of 'checks' and cracks in the pieces.  Most places say that properly seasoned wood will measure between 10 and 20 percent on the moisture meter.  Here's my reading(s) below - you can see I'm getting 14% and 15% on different pieces in the pile - but both of these are LARGER pieces, so as to not skew the reading with a thin cut piece that could dry out more.